Egan's GTI Caddis

Another Winner From Lance

Egan's GTI Caddis

A couple of years ago, Cheech and I were fishing a back woods river with some fairly finicky Brown Trout. This day it seemed the fish were neither interested in dry flies nor streamers, so I ended up switching over to a tight line or Euro style nymphing method.  I went through a few patterns with not much luck and Cheech tossed me a caddis pattern to try out. My first cast into the next hole brought up a nice fish. A few casts later and I was tight into another. When all was said and done, this little pattern had turned my day around. It wasn't until a few days later when I wanted to tie a few of my own that I really paid attention to what he said the pattern was. Turns out I wasn't surprised when I found out this was another killer Lance Egan pattern.

For those who don't know Lance, he's a super fishy dude that has some secret pact with the devil in exchange for wooing fish into his control and subsequently his net. Besides being a successful competition fisherman (Team USA etc), he's a great fly tyer to boot as well as a friend of ours, so I made sure he was cool with running the pattern here. Now, I'll be honest, I've since come up with some variations, including some whacky dubbing substitutions, but I wanted to stay as true to Lance's real-deal version on this, so you're getting about as close as I can come to that. The only exception here would be my use of a Partridge Czech nymph as opposed to Lance's standard Hanak 300 series Czech nymph hook. Beyond that, this is true to Lance's intended design.

I tie them in this color scheme here as well as a darker olive, brown, neon green and a cinnamon body too. The fish pictured here took the cinnamon toned version.

Brown trout on a GTI Caddis

 You can vary the bead and lead-free wire to make it sink faster or slower. I also go with a slimmer version and smaller bead and hook so I can drop it behind dry flies as well. Otherwise, most any nymphing rig will treat this fly well.

So we'll throw out a couple of similar versions, with Lance's listed first. His version is also the one featured in the video tutorial shown below.

Material List:

Hook: Hanak 300 #10 - #16 (I used a Partridge Czech Nymph hook in #10)  (BUY HERE)
Thread; UTC 70 Denier, Olive  (BUY HERE)
Bead: 3.3 mm Tungsten, Gold   (BUY HERE)
Weight: .015" Lead Free Wire   (BUY HERE)
Tail: Peacock Herl   (BUY HERE)
Rib #1: Krystal Flash, Olive   (BUY HERE)
Rib #2: 5X Tippet mono-filament material
Abdomen: Hare-Tron Dubbin, Olive  (BUY HERE)
Thorax: Az Synthetic Dubbing, Peacock  (BUY HERE)
Back: Scud Back, 1/8", Summer Duck  (BUY HERE)


Cinnamon Variation (pictured in mouth above):

Hook: Hanak 300 #10 - #16 (I used a Partridge Czech Nymph hook in #10)  (BUY HERE)
Thread; UTC 70 Denier, Rusty Brown (BUY HERE)
Bead: 3.3 mm Tungsten, Gold   (BUY HERE)
Weight: .015" Lead Free Wire   (BUY HERE)
Tail: Peacock Herl   (BUY HERE)
Rib #1: Krystal Flash, Bonefish Pink   (BUY HERE)
Rib #2: 5X Tippet mono-filament material
Abdomen: Hare-Tron Dubbin, Cinnamon Caddis  (BUY HERE)
Thorax: Az Synthetic Dubbing, Pheasant Tail  (BUY HERE)
Back: Scud Back, 1/8", Summer Duck  (BUY HERE)