The CDC and ELK EMERGER by Gordon Van Der Spuy

Egyptian goose biots are brilliant. I love the fact that they are long and thin. This makes them easy to work with for a wide range of fly sizes. I also love their coloration. That charcoal colour is a prevalent feature on a lot of aquatic organisms. Using Egyptian goose biots is not dissimilar to using stripped peacock quills as it gives you a very similar effect. I love contrast in fly patterns as I feel it makes them more visible to fish.

That dark charcoal colour ridge on the lighter goose biot gives you this effect. The ridge of the biot has tiny micro hairs on it which imitates the gills on mayfly nymphs brilliantly without having to go through the pains of tantric fly tying (not that fish actually care about the gills on mayfly patterns). The advantage biots have over peacock quills is that they require minimal maintenance. You don’t need to strip them or anything like that.

They are also great in that they are naturally tapered which allows one to achieve excellent tapered bodies without having to lay a tapered thread underbody to get the job done (this saves you time). By slightly overlapping the biot after each wrap the taper is created. The only help they need when using them is a bit of spit to make them a bit more pliable when being wrapped as wrapping dry biots will often cause them to split. Soaking them in ones mouth for a few seconds prior to tying them in is all that is needed. Barring a thread body a biot body is the simplest and fastest way to achieve a lekker body on a fly.

Peacock biots are also very useful especially if you’re going for a lighter coloured body. They are a tannish colour with a nice red brown edge to them. They can be used just like this or dyed depending on your requirements. If you’re lazy a copic marker on stream will do the trick too. Like the Goose biots they have excellent length and are nice and thin too.

Mark Krige put me onto them years ago when I walked into “Upstream” to buy Turkey Biots. Biots as bodies are simply put just brilliant. They’re quick and easy to manufacture, dirt cheap and are extremely effective in giving you that lovely taper. It’s not surprising then that I use them on about 80% of everything I tie. The CDC and elk emerger is no exception.

The CDC and elk emerger is nothing new. I got the idea for the fly from Mike Mercers ingenious “Missing link”. Mercer’s pattern was tied to specifically imitate crippled caddis flies. The defining feature of the fly for me was that Mercer used an Elk hair wing which doubled as the post of the fly. A hackle is basically wrapped around the base of the wing parachute style. What this does is push the elk wing higher away from the hook shank and render the fly more buoyant in the process and less prone to getting water logged as the wing angle prevents water from seeping into the fibres. It simply floats better and for longer than the traditional down wing style of tying an elk wing. If you don’t believe me try it! I think it is pure genius.

My pal James Leach ties a small piece of fluorescent red antron on top of the wing as an additional sighter. It’s amazing from how far off the fly is visible even when tied in small sizes. The nice thing about this is that the sighter is not visible to the fish at all due to the way the wing is tied in. I replaced Mercers hackle with cdc instead as I felt it gave the fly more movement along with a buggier profile. Cdc imitates the optical play of light on an insects appendages and micro body hairs better than any other material I know of so including cdc just made sense. In slower flowing water and in pools it is just better than conventional hackle as adds static mobility to the pattern, with tiny fibres moving even when the pattern is completely static.

Like the klinkhamer it could be a wide range of things. It really is what I like to call a ‘Buffet’ fly. It represents nothing in particular but could be a number of different things. It presents well, floats well, is easy to spot in a wide range of lighting conditions and can be tied in under 5 minutes. I’ve fished it far and wide and it’s caught fish wherever I’ve used it. Fish just seem to come to it like Kids to soft serve! All in all a winning combination. Nothing new as I said, just a bunch of cool existing ideas thrown together to provide me with a solid user friendly emerger.

The Author with a nice Yellow caught on this fly. Photo credit: Tourettes Fishing

List of materials needed

Hook: Gamakatsu C12 #18 - #14

Abdomen: Egyptian goose biot wrapped around the greater part of the hook shank ( treat the thread lightly with zap a gap before wrapping the biot, this will just render the fly more durable)

Wing: Bleached elk hair or natural comparadun hair . Tie this on top of the hook shank. Pull the hair up and make a few thread wraps around the base of the wing to lift it up slightly.

Sighter ( optional) : Fluorescent red antron Hackle: CDC in a split thread that is wound parachute hackle style.