After the previous post on The Mustard Caddis, I took the conversation further with Horst, questioning him about his original version of the fly and who actually invented the pattern. He mentioned that his original version was in fact called the SS Shrimp and that the Mustard Caddis evolved from the shrimp fly, simply because he was looking for an easier way to tie the pattern (the SS Shrimp had too many tying steps and was too time consuming in his opinion).
Horst’s SS Shrimp fly, the predecessor to his evergreen Mustard Caddis.
So, Horst actually tampered with one of his own yellowfish inventions to create the Mustard Caddis – the original Mustard Caddis as I know it was simply mustardy coloured chenille wrapped around the hook shank with flashabou as ribbing to form the abdomen of the fly.
The original Mustard Caddis as most of us know it, the first ‘simplified’ pattern that followed Horst’s SS Shrimp.
Horst then continued to play with his Mustard Caddis invention until he settled on the pattern displayed in the previous step-by-step fly tying post.
A stunning largescale from the Pongola River, in his words: “I haven’t had a fish for a long time pull that hard. Crazy!”
More 2024 Mustard Caddis success, Horst with a large smallscale yellowfish that he recently caught in the Assegaai River.
Although by and large a ‘caddis larvae’ imitation (and although the rivers in the Lüneburg area are full of larvae from different caddis species, even some of the giant Polymorphanisus species), Horst admits that it is such a great search pattern in his rivers because of the many things that it could potentially imitate and especially due to that distinct ‘mustard’ colour. In other words, it is a great general search pattern for yellowfish because it could even be mistaken for a sand dragon (gomphid dragonfly nymph), stonefly nymph or burrowing mayfly nymph, too:
