Fountains of Youth – Classic trout flies that have withstood the test of time … flies that remain “forever young”

by Rusty Dunn

Groundhog Day is an important landmark for most an­glers, as February 2nd is midway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox.  Winter is fading fast, and spring is on the mind, if not yet in the air.  Punx­sutawney Phil emerges from his burrow, looks for his shadow, and thereby forecasts the severity of winter’s retreat.  Hope springs eternal on Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day for angling author Eric Leiser was the fateful day when he dispatched a groundhog while speeding along New York Route 30 near Pepacton Reservoir in the Catskills.  The good fortune of that encounter, followed by swift application of a skinning knife, produced the key ingredient of what later be­came Leiser’s signa­ture fly pat­terns.  Groundhogs, known also as wood­chucks and whistle-pigs, are ground-dwelling marmots whose fur is an excellent but underappreciated mate­rial for fly tying.  Leiser ad­mired his handsome roadkill and, in time, grew to ap­preciate woodchuck fur for its texture, floatation, strength, and versatility in fly tying.

Leiser aspired as a young man to be a musician and songwriter, but his first royalty check for a recorded composition amounted to $13.41.  A second royalty statement reported “No Sales”.  Leiser then real­ized that a career in music was unlikely.  Instead, he pur­sued his life­long interests in fishing, hunting, and the outdoors.  Those pursuits eventually established Lei­ser as one of the most influential fly tying materials ex­perts of the 20th century.  He opened Fireside An­gler in Melville, NY in the 1960s as a mail-order source of quality fly tying materials.  Only a dozen or so such mail-order suppli­ers existed at the time, and Fire­side An­gler quickly became one of the most influen­tial.  Leiser supplied tying materials to most of the mid-century gi­ants of American fly fishing.

Leiser was a self-taught angler who learned his skills stand­ing in a river and sitting at the tying bench.  He published between 1973 and 1987 six fly tying books that are thoroughly excellent but, with one exception, not widely discussed today.  They are rich in de­tailed, first-hand knowledge about the meth­ods and materials of successful angling.  If you need information on how to hunt, kill, skin, clean, tan, prepare, and store wild or domesticated animals for fly tying, Leiser’s 1973 book Fly Tying Materials is all you need.  His second book, The Complete Book of Fly Tying (1977) is his most in­fluential.  It instructed decades of begin­ning fly tyers on the craft and, remarka­bly, is still in print to­day.  Leiser’s third book, The Caddis and the Angler (1977, coau­thored with Larry Soloman), was the very first to de­scribe cad­disfly life cycles and behaviors in detail and to provide fly patterns that imi­tate each stage.  Fly anglers were slow to fully appre­ci­ate the im­portance of caddisflies to trout, but Leiser & Soloman remedied the over­sight.  For these and other accom­plishments, Leiser was elected in 2002 to the Hall of Fame of the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum.

The Woodchuck Caddis, known better as the Chuck Caddis, is one of Eric Leiser’s favorite flies, in part be­cause it features a wing of woodchuck guard hairs.  Such hairs are stiff without being rigid, float well, and are beautifully barred (black-tan-black-white) along their length.  The Chuck Caddis incorporates features of many successful caddis imitations: a short body, a down-wing silhou­ette of long fibers folded over the body, and fur dubbing fibers in constant motion atop the surface.  It consist­ently brings up fish during the entire season and in all parts of the country.

Leiser refused to take credit for design of the Chuck Caddis, because he knew of an unpublished earlier imitation named Eddy’s Fly.  ‘Eddy’ has never been identified, but Leiser replaced Eddy’s body of orange monocord with fur dubbing chosen to match the color of prevail­ing naturals.  The result­ing fly is simple, durable, and very ef­fective.  Stock your fly box with Chuck Caddis in vari­ous sizes and colors, and you can relive Groundhog Day over and over again, every single day of the trout season.

Copyright 2022, Rusty Dunn

Chuck Caddis 

A dirty orange Chuck Caddis is Leiser’s favorite.  For a caddis skater imitation, use oversized hackle.  The entire fly should ride above the water, supported only by the hackle and wing tips.  Such skaters can draw explosive rises during periods of caddis egg-laying.