When I was first learning to flyfish, it was with the assistance of a neighbor boy…Lennie. He had been commissioned by a woman at a sporting goods store to tie one fly for commercial sale…the one fly was the orange bodied Tied Down Caddis. So, as I fished for rainbows and cutt throat trout, the only fly I had for years was the TDC. I new little about presentation or caddis or what trout ate. I did recall the slashing takes by trout of the one and only fly Lennie tied. He received 5 cents for each fly tied. That aside he pilfered off a few here and there and we had our ready arsenal for Summer.
As I have offered in previous posts, we move from the old standbys to the new and interesting patterns. We forget the old and abandon them. Try to find a TDC and you will not find one, excepting a steelhead version on the Welches, Oregon shop’s site and even then it has a buzz cut head…not how the original was tied. So, I have tried to recreate it here. I tied it a bit messy and the deer hair was too coarse and a bit twisted as I pulled it over but you get he idea of how it should look. I am going to tie more and make the fly a little sleaker. Still as it looks here it is quite close to Lennie’s original that he tied as a young teen.
SwittersB & Exploring 
I’ve been delving onto my personal “forgotten flies” as of late, documenting them, and resurrecting them for use this season. I was introduced to the TDC on trips to fish the upper Deschutes when I first learned to flyfish in the mid-70’s. We would buy them at the old Whitney Sporting Goods store in Sisters on our way over. Sizes 6-8 with body colors of dirty yellow, orange, and brown. They caught a lot of browns! Thanks for sharing a forgotten standby and for allowing me to reminisce. Keep up the good work!
LikeLike
I remember Whitney’s well on the West end of town, before the Fly Fisher’s Place opened with Harry/Dee Teal…
Some of those old patterns, found in hardware stores were large, old standby’s that worked. The trout I ever caught from the Metolius R. was on a large Woolly Worm purchased from the hardware store in Priineville! I didn’t tie then….and the Woolly Worm and a Montana Stone were my Metolius Standby’s….
LikeLike