It was a Northern California ritual, get a whiff of the dairy outside Redding, then slam on the brakes for the obligatory “The Fly Shop” pilgrimage. The excuse being to replace aging tippet which quickly morphed into fondling most of the upstairs plumage.

While I was never able to exit the premises without blowing that extra hundred bucks, those expenditures have kept me from feeling any real trauma over our recent lack of genetic hackle.

With the new year and rumors of hair extensions on the wane, thoughts of chicken production and delivery keeps circling through the ranks, enough that I thought I might dig into the retail side to separate fact from the fiction, and determine what 2012 holds for the fly tier whose necks are more follicles than feathers …

… and no, you shouldn’t exhale yet, the prognosis is quite bleak.

Many catalogs and online stores have a markedly reduced presence of product, some offer hints at long delays, and orders I placed via online websites were followed up with politely worded cautions and cancellations …

Thank you for your order.  The Metz Microbarb Saddles will be out of stock for at least a year.  Please let us know if you would like to wait that long or longer.

Which for most of us is about as plain as it gets.

Both J. Stockard and the Fly Shop were kind enough to make mention of what they’re seeing from inside the vendor food chain, but many of their comments reflect uncertainty with delivery and which vendors have committed their 2012 production to the hair industry.

From J. Stockard & Co. :

Metz advised us several months ago that they will have no
rooster saddles for dealers this season. On the other hand we are getting delivery of some product from Whiting in all of their lines that we carry. Admittedly, some colors are unavailable from Whiting and their shipping is still slower than usual although it has improved slightly since the Fall.

… and from the Fly Shop a similar picture …

Other than Keough, neither Whiting or Metz has given us a definitive answer about availability.  Keough won’t have any necks or saddles until 2013, that’s assuming he doesn’t pre-sell it all to the hairs (it looks as if the fad is starting to wane).  Metz has always been hard to deal with and even if they didn’t sell their whole supply to the hairs, they probably wouldn’t be able to deliver anyway.  Whiting is the only one that has been really good to us.  While they haven’t delivered everything, we have received a steady supply of saddles, necks and 100 packs.

I would expect the shops are keeping what little supply they’re delivered for the endlessly long waiting list generated by regulars and walk-in traffic, and perhaps to make a bare wall seem less so. Us online shoppers being lumped in with the “hairs” and forced to wait a bit longer.

This premise was given more credibility when orders placed with the Fly Shop via their online store were cancelled, with the reason given as “product unavailability.”

J. Stockard doesn’t list anything larger than a 1/4 saddle and while full necks are mentioned, both come with a substantial warning of delays and outages.

Availability of this product is extremely limited. If no colors are listed below, we have none in stock. Colors will be re-listed on this page when they become available. Availability of colors listed below is not guaranteed and we cannot accept backorders for this product.

What we can conclude is that the fad seems to be on the wane, but it’s not disappearing fast enough for any return to normal deliveries for this season.

The Bad News being those threadbare necks and saddles will have to serve you another year, the good news being that hurling a few shot and something heavy enough to splash will chase most of the Metrosexuals from the sport, leaving the rest of the dry fly purists to grow a bit of hair on their chests …

… but only if they stop waxing them …

Note: I solicited a response from the Whiting Company, but they failed to respond. I find that none too surprising given that they’ve likely endured a lot of angry shopkeepers and anglers over the last twelve months, and can’t blame them for being close to the vest with commentary.