May Caddis in the Driftless

Every spring around the end of April my angling focus turns toward caddis hatches in the driftless area.  These hatches have provided me with some of my most memorable dry fly experiences.  I know that to people who are lucky enough to travel, or even live out west where large stoneflies and mayflies get more attention a caddis hatch may just be an everyday occurrence on some stream somewhere, but I have a problem that I’m sure I share with many fisherman…. not enough time to fish.  In the last five years I’ve learned a little about what kind of water and what conditions caddis will hatch around southwest Wisconsin.  Somewhere between the end of April and the beginning of June when the sun first really starts to feel warm is usually when I start to see the unmistakable moth-like flutter of caddis around shallow riffles.  Dead drifting a deer or elk hair caddis around riffles and along cut banks usually gets the job done, but whenever I stumble upon a big flat pool skating the fly seems to get more attention.  Yesterday, when Brett and I started on our drive to a favorite spring creek all I could think about was if the timing was right and if the bugs would show.  We warmed up with a few fish on nymphs and streamers while the sun was low and the temps were still cool.  As the afternoon sun warmed up we started to see a caddis here and there and got a few fish to rise.  By mid afternoon the air temp was in the 60’s and sun was feeling hot.  We came up to one long stretch of shallow riffles and noticed quite a few caddis dancing around the surface of the water.  Strangely, there were no fish in the riffles feeding or in the run downstream.  After another minute of observing this stretch of water I noticed the long flat pool above the riffles was dimpled with rises.  Then it hit me.  The wind was blowing gusts around 15 mph by now and was blowing the caddis upstream from the riffles where they were hatching rather than the flow of the water carrying them down stream to the run below the riffles where I more commonly see the feeding activity.  Just like past years a basic deer hair caddis fooled about a dozen trout, and of course right when it got fun I ran out of time.  The caddis party should be on for a few more weeks and I hope I’m lucky enough to be there at the right time once more this spring.