Before Twitter the social network site took over the word, twitter used to mean flutter nervously and described the action of the travelling sedge, the ‘walk on water’ caddis.

As far as most fly fishing amateur entomologists are concerned caddis and sedge are one and the same. Yet without splitting too fine of a hair, sedge is normally reserved for a few special caddis (caddi?) none more special than the traveling sedge. While the ‘traveling sedge’ umbrella actually covers a few different hatches that is a hair we’ll leave unsplit for now.

What the traveling sedge does is run across the water when emerging; the most famous of these emerge on the lakes of British Columbia. But that same species (or a close enough relative) lives in many lakes across the Northern US and Canada.

The rough average of these hatches is Mid-June to Mid-July but can vary up to a month on each side, depending on the particular year and your particular latitude. About two weeks before emerging pupae reach the surface they emerge from the substrate and make themselves available for patient, hungry cruising trout. Once the pupae reach the surface their vulnerability is at its highest. Pausing a goodly amount of time on the surface to escape it pupal shuck and seemingly catching its breath it then starts its twittering across the surface, leaving its wake like the skating, trout enticing phenom it is.

Some other random tips include observe the action of the natural and mimic it with your own strip and twitch retrieve. Wait each day for the hatch to start fish pupa patterns until then or sink your dry patterns for that matter. Takes are usually vicious, head snapping matters, so make sure your tippet can handle the initial stress and keep your hand light, hard to do in the initial stages of the hatch to be sure!

Patterns include Tom Thumb, Goddard Caddis.