Egg Laying Snowshoe Grannom Caddis

Fishing dry flies for the grannom caddis hatch can be a lesson in patience. Some would say it is a fool’s errand entirely. If you know what to look for, and can time it right it can be extremely rewarding. The Mother’s Day Caddis hatch or Grannom Caddis is a spring hatch that sweeps North America. Typically, it is the first significant caddis hatch of the year and can produce huge “blanket” hatches which provide trout with many targets on the surface. Many people claim that fish strictly feed on pupae for this hatch, which sometimes is true. Swinging soft hackles and dead drifting pupae can be deadly, but so can fishing flies closer to the surface. Running an emerger behind a dry is typically my go to, but egg laying variants can work fantastic, especially if you time it right with an egg laying event. If you are on the river and happen to see swarms of grannoms moving upstream, I highly recommend that you follow that swarm up. Typically they will choose a glide to spawn and for females to oviposit eggs on the water. These egg laying events create a feeding frenzy and it can be some of the best dry fly fishing of the spring if you can time it right. After the hatch has been going on for some time, fish are keyed in on cripples, mergers, pupae, and egg laying females specifically. This makes searching with an egg laying caddis a fantastic choice. Grannoms are similar size to many of our summer and fall caddis species too, so this fly will get love all of the way through fall as well.