One of the single-most impactful flies ever developed by the great Craig Mathews of Blue Ribbon Flies. Simple yet sophisticated, the X Caddis was designed to mimic freshly emerged caddis in the midst of shedding their shuck. The introduction of the synthetic tying material Z-lon changed the game of fly tying for the way it diffuses light and mimics the casing of an emerging insect. If you were to choose one single caddis dry fly to fish for the rest of your life… The X-Caddis is surely in contention.

From the tyer:

“We came up with the X Caddis thirty-five plus fishing seasons ago. Like many of our fly patterns, this one was created to fool the larger resident rainbow trout of the Henrys Fork.

It was my wife Jackies idea to tie a trailing-shimmering, sparkling shuck on a caddis imitation. Her reasoning was simple, if super-selective trout took Sparkle Duns with their trailing shuck for emerging and crippled mayflies why wouldnt the same thing work with caddis imitations too?

We know that caddis, like mayflies, can experience difficulties emerging from their pupal shucks at times. Many end up trapped in their shucks entirely or with the shucks trailing off their body and wings fully emerged.

Fish may not always key in on cripples or impaired adults, but weve found this fly works well, in fact much better than standard ties like the Elk Hair Caddis. We fish it as a dry fly, upstream, dead-drifting is the most productive method, casting to individual fish that are rising.

The fly also works well when pulled under the surface in front of rising trout and allowed to pop to the surface.”

– Signature Tyer Craig Mathews