So a few questions, the primary revolving around case caddis patterns. Unfortunately I lost my C&F nymph box this weekend, hundreds of hours of nymph tying down the river. Fortunately, Harold decided to cut me a break on replacements, which was a nice surprise, though now I hae a long slog on the bench ahead:

1. I saw on your youtube video on the case caddis pattern that you overdub the green head with black, so that there is only a small band of green at the head. Most other patterns (and ones I have tied in the past), don't cover the green and leave it as a nub. Is there a reason for your overdubbing? Does it work better? Any other general thoughts on case caddis? Do you ever do the trimmed rubber bodies that one see on the internet and in books? Ever glued sand to the dubbing?

2. Just out of interest, two weekends back i was on the river and got angler surveyed for the first time. First shocking news, according to the DEP guy, was that a three fish afternoon over four hours was "very good" for the Housy that day (I thought it was miserable), but more importantly, he was attributing the bad fishing to increased flows due to the dam releasing more water. He kept referring to how good the water has become due to the varied release schedule at the dam. Now I was under the impression that natural flows meant there was no active policy of releases, so why would the DEP guy think otherwise? Seemed kinda strange to attribute the high water to increased releases as opposed to something like rain...

Last bit of weirdness to share with the group, prior to loosing my flybox, I was attacked by a squirrel midstream...literally about thirty feet from the shore, at the bottom end of gravel hole I was switching out my streamer and I felt something on my leg to look down and see a long grey furry thing trying to climb up my waders. At first I thought it was an old fish corpse that washed up against me, only to see it jump off and swim away...weird.