Category Archives: Fly Tying

One you can lick your fingers, the other you can’t

You hear the term often in fly tying, you just don’t see anyone actually doing the deed – outside of the occasional Peacock eye made hairless by swishing it around in caustic bleach, which is about all I’ve ever seen anyone do …

Which makes a lot of sense, as everytime I’ve touched the bottle it meant I had more than enough and didn’t mind destroying a couple square feet.

I’ve always accused dyeing as the Destroyer of Materials, but that’s just to scare them with weak constitutions. When the material dries you may not have a good color, but at least you’ve got something …

… watching something bleach will cure you of the temptation to do it again. Soaking a piece of fur in straight bleach is not what you’d expect; the bath starts to heat to the point where it may melt the plastic bowl, likely a reaction to chemicals the hide was steeped in during the tanning or hide preparation process, then hair and flesh start vanishing and the rest turns into a flesh colored slag that covers what’s left of the fur with a gooey bubblegum residue.

Eventually you kind of back away until the temperature lowers to the point you can toe what’s left into the trash.

Bleached hair patches and lightened colors on furs and feathers have typically been treated with Hydrogen Peroxide or similar lightening agent.

Hydrogen Peroxide is available in any supermarket or local drugstore, it’s an antiseptic and is sold as a 3% solution in the aisle with medical supplies and liniments. This concentration can lighten hair (human and animal) with numerous applications or one long soak.

"Bleached" Beaver - and some I've dyed yellow

The center color above was “bleached” in a single bath of 3% peroxide. It took 92 hours to achieve this color from its natural gray. Four additional pieces I’ve dyed yellow ring the bleached color. As it is now, tossing a chunk into a drawer ensures a lifetime of Light Cahill’s.

Natural Beaver contrasted with dyed Yellow

Natural beaver is much too dark to be able to dye into light colors, at best it’ll turn muddy-dark. The above pieces were dyed in the identical pot for the same amount of time. Only the bleached hide can achieve the light olive I was attempting.

Light_olive_Beaver

So long as the fur is completely submerged the peroxide bath will ensure consistency of color. Note in the above photo how the Olive color is uniform from downy underfur to the tips. This is done by first pumping the back of the hide to force all the air bubbles out of the material, then dumping the result straight into the solution without wringing.

Beaver guard hairs will resist the dye mightily, and might only take on a tint of the desired color, this is true of most tough hair, especially those of the aquatic mammals.

Peroxide Orange Beaver

Hair stylists use a powdered lightener along with Hydrogen Peroxide to avoid “orangey” colored hair like the above. Internet forums mention that straight peroxide often yields an orange effect on human hair. Once the fibers are any shade close they should be pulled and dried anyways, as they’ll lighten into a tan-orange which is perfect for our later applications of dye.

Peroxide is available in food grade as well; solutions ranging between 8% and 35% and a cost commensurate. These will cut the time down significantly, 12% took the same beaver from gray to tan in just over 18 hours, but the solution costs around a dollar an ounce at that concentration. Most of the higher concentrations have to be mail ordered and signed for by someone over 18 as well.

Every animal is a bit different both in qualities and texture of their hair, and degree of lightening needed to reduce their natural color to something light enough for dye. It’s best to experiment with small chunks to determine how long the base 3% will take to render an appropriate shade for your use.

Just tuck a large bowl of the cheap stuff ($2.00) into the garage, carve the hides into 5×5 pieces and check the mix come the weekend, there’s little risk of it getting too light.

Free Range Dubbing: Unless you’re looking at it in direct sunlight, you’re not seeing what I made for you

Free Range Label I figure my sudden foray into dubbing was like McDonald’s adding salads to an otherwise lard-based menu. How the lights abruptly dimmed and the sudden demand for lettuce left most of the country rediscovering Broccoli for their evening meal.

Like the gals and their hair extensions, I was unfazed that I emptied most warehouses of everything furry. I started with the wholesale furriers, worked my way through the local stuff and fur coats on eBay, and when I’d exhausted the obvious sources, I’d make the call to my contact at the SPCA to see what was chilling rapidly …

A couple of months worth of effort turned into the better part of a year’s worth of research, failed automation, test groups and test colors, research on color mixing, dyes … and worse, suddenly needing to find vast amounts of odd animals to include once refined to their final formula.

Failed automation meant having to do it all by hand in the kitchen. Meaning it’s been a lonely year – bread, water, and solitary confinement does that to a person …

All of this started off simply enough, a general indifference to the dubbing products available in today’s fly shop, most of which featured some sparkly synthetic as its only real quality. Absent from the shelves are the natural dubbings of the past; crafted to make it easy to apply on thread, or coarse so its stubbled profile resembles something comely, or all natural featuring aquatic mammals to make gossamer thin dry fly bodies.

Instead were pushed towards some glittering turd that is about as easy to dub as a Brillo pad, and sparkles like a perfumed tart.

So I brought the manicured styles back; finding in the process that few tiers are left with the skills to refine dubbing to specific tasks, fewer relay the ritual to print to teach others, and most new tiers are content with products the way they are as they’ve not been exposed to others. It’s as if the qualities of fur and the skills to turn them to our advantage are disappearing.

As mentioned in previous posts on dubbing, there are three distinct layers in a crafted dubbing, allowing you to insert distinct qualities as part of each layer’s construction. I’ve likened dubbing construction to a cigar, where the finished product contains binder, filler, and wrapper.

The Wrapper is the coarsest material, often made of animals with well marked guard hair, suitable for adding spike and shag to the finished blend.

The filler is often the coloring agent, made up of semi-coarse or semi-fine materials that comprise the bulk of the dubbing…

… and the binder is the softest component, which is often added in proportion to the filler and wrapper to hold all three layers together in a cohesive bundle.

Somewhere in all of this can be a fourth layer, not always present, that I call “special effects.” Shiny or sparkle, pearlescent or opalescent, some quality that natural materials lack which can be added to liven it with color or a metallic effect.

Free_Range_Dubbing2

The Free Range Difference

What I’ve constructed is a dubbing designed to assist both beginner and expert tiers by including specific desirable qualities that should belong in any quality nymph dubbing:

Ease of Use: The material isn’t unruly nor possessed of qualities of some Brillo-style gaudy synthetic. The soft binder layer entraps the spiky wrapper and makes dubbing the fur onto the thread easy.

Sized for 8 – 16 hooks: All the fibers present in each color have been sized to best fit your most common sizes of nymphs. That means you won’t be yanking too many overly long fibers out of your dubbing, or off the finished flies, as even the multiple guard hairs used have been chosen for length as well as coloration.

Minimal Shrinkage When Wet: The fibers of the filler layer, which comprise the largest part of the dubbing as well as most of the color, are chosen for their curl, so they will maintain their shape wet or dry, and what proportions leaves your vise will be retained when the fly is soaking wet.

Blended Color versus Monochrome: Each of the colors is the result of between 5 and 11 different materials, each with different shades and tints that add themselves to make the overall coloration. Like Mother Nature, whose insects are never a uniform color, each pinch yields a bit of unique in every fly tied.

Spectral Coloration: The special effects of each are often synthetic spectral color components, containing a range of colors that are sympathetic with the overall blend color.

Only Buggy Colors: We chose to concentrate our colors into traditional insect hues leaving the lightly used colors out of the collection. Most fly tiers have a drawer filled with colors that are rarely used, we’d prefer to focus on the “money” colors like olive and brown.

Rather than a single color of Olive, we’ll offer a half dozen olives – as they’re far more useful than coral pink or watermelon. We’ve done the same for brown and gray, and even added effects to make more than a single black.

Food-based Names: Everyone knows that colors named with food references are twice as tasty to fish. We got’em, they don’t – ’nuff said.

Twice as much: Earlier in the research phase of the project I discovered the average dubbing vendor now only gives you 0.91 of a gram with 2 grams of brightly painted cardboard. I’ll give you a couple grams of goodie, and a biodegradable slip of paper instead …

Free Range Dusky Olive

What it isn’t …

It’s not going to leap onto your thread unassisted, nor will it make your fingers less tacky and curb your propensity to grab too much. It’s not some painted harlot made gaudy by too much color. Special effects are nearly invisible to the eye, representing about 2% of the fiber, and until the fur is moved into direct sunlight, only then can you see the refractive elements that make the mix glow and sparkle.

Naturally once someone says, “ … and the trout see …” Everything past that is a leap of faith. Millions of nice fellows have roused from their cups to pound  table and insist trout love something or other. This entire collection is my sermon on colors and textures, imbued with everything I hold sacred.

Until I can get some automation in place this is more a labor of love than  profit. I managed to incur some fierce loyalties to the end result from many of the folks testing, and with a new season about to debut and them tying to make up for lost time, they’re looking for me to live up to my end of the bargain.

I have 20 colors completed and am planning about 10 additional colors to fill gaps. Most of the Olives and Browns and Grays are completed already, I just need to see what I reach for that isn’t there.

Yes, we’re a bit ahead of our supply lines still, but the season starts next weekend, and I can’t have you feeling naked and resentful. I figure after a couple trips into the season I’ll know exactly what’s missing.

If you would like a sample of the dubbing, drop me a note. I’ll put something in there you’ll like and you can send me a stamped envelope to cover my expenses …

We’ve got Black Ants that size, but they float

Fly tying is a mixture of the two Invariably someone asks me, “what’s the hardest thing in fly tying?”

Most expect me to mention the multiple hours it takes to complete a fully dressed salmon fly, or a knotted leg attempt at realism – involving lots of glue and much effort, but those are simply mechanical tasks and may be time consuming, but are easy once you’ve done them a couple thousand times …

What’s the hardest thing in fly tying?  … giving up your reliance on other people’s patterns, showing a little confidence in yourself and your own critical eye.

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise if you think about it critically, but fly tiers and baseball players are the last bastion of weakness and superstition – the only difference between the two, is that one carries a rabbit’s foot for good luck, and the other dismembers rabbits and carries all four should the good luck run out …

Fly tiers will invariable take some form of instruction to get them started and then rely on books and magazines, or the Internet, to continue the learning process. Over time they learn never to trust a photograph and always refer to the text recipe – knowing that lighting and focus can change the hue and color of the fly, making the components less recognizable.

Lacking all the printed materials in the pattern means the finished fly is damaged goods. It’s Awesome*, worthy of mention with Barry Bond’s steroid enhanced home run record.

Flies worthy of publication have magical properties, each having killed thousands of fish – and therefore chosen by editors for their killing qualities – not to be tinkered with by mortals, or anyone else having just finished an Intermediate class.

It gets in our head early, and lies there like a leaden weight.

As the seasons whiz by we’ll occasionally venture out and develop a bug for some favorite venue we’ve fished for years. When someone spies them they’ll be a lot of pursed lips and raised eyebrows, once their origin is known, and we’ll get a half hearted shrug before they move onto the brightly colored monstrosity in the next compartment, whose pedigree includes magazine covers, the latest synthetics, and an offshore source requiring a new rod, new leader, and the reflexes of a Cobra to fish it …

Yet the lackluster was our fly, it was us, the sum of our deduction and science merits only a raised eyebrow and a shrug.

… and as our flies begin to look like the magazine flies, and we start to surpass them in quality we’re emboldened. We select a handful of prophets, whose flies and articles resonate with us and we mimic their work and science.

At some point even that’s cast aside and we’re no longer following the rest of the crowd. Magazine flies are revealed to be nothing more than some fellow’s anthropomorphic idea of what a Damsel fly looks like – and it’s tied poorly to boot.

Now a fishing trip becomes a snack food; you’re swept up in all the dark nymphs that worked so well on the last trip, and how we’ll invent new dark nymphs just for the occasion – and we’ll marvel that they outfish anything tied from a magazine and anything commercially available in the store.

…and with that discovery, you’ll realize that fly tying is many years of learning different fly styles and their construction, whose colors are not set in stone like the picture – but are waiting for you to enhance and define.

Now that you’ve mastered the AP style, the standard dry, the cripple, the big stonefly nymph, the leech, and parachute, only now does science, art, and fishing come together, and your muse is a tuft of dander, or a clump of sparkle.

Those anglers that don’t tie flies wish they did. All of them, without exception.

They’ll learn the same truths as tiers only it’ll take them longer. They have much less to chose from then the rest of us, and little to unbalance their loyalties to the commercial giants; Adam’s, Humpies, Zug Bug’s and Elk Hair Caddis. To them a black nymph can be the AP Black, or the Black Martinez, and nothing else is possible in black and size sixteen.

Probably why the average age of the beginning fly tier is nearer forty-five, and the stray kid is taking it because his dad is trying a second time. A decade or so of fishing ensures those same truths, newly self evident, means without an indentured servant for supply, art and science will compel him to submit to moths and head cement, and the hardest thing in fly tying will be the easier.

Grams worth hundreds, so why does all that fly fishing science end at the tippet?

I’ve oft wondered at all the toil and expense for the rod maker to remove a sixteenth of an ounce and whether all that engineering and measurement made enough difference to matter. Likewise for that disc drag and aircraft grade titanium that the reel maker boasts is so much more sturdy and durable, and whether he too wasn’t simply enamored with differences versus any tangible effect.

The line maker insists that slick or pebbled is the one true finish, and countless scientists struggle to define slick, in hopes of making it more so.

Heavy butted, limp, monofilament or fluorocarbon to transfer the line’s energy to the fly, but there the refinement and science dies, as fly choice is a mixture of semi-educated premise, intuition, and guesswork.

Figure the average outfit has been tuned by forty or fifty scientists, each with their own ideas on action, stiffness, and weight. Many thousands spent on rare earths and minerals to coat and build the ensemble, and when it finally gets to you, you can’t decide whether to use one or two split shot to drag sharp stuff through deep stuff?

I find it just a bit humorous, and why I can’t stifle a giggle when some rod engineer uses terms like “pure” and “essence”.”

As a fly tier I find fault with overtly heavy rigs or flies. Early Spring fishing is largely dominated by weighted, beaded, thick and heavy, all of which yanks at me when I yank at it, and makes fishing a series of flop casts that carry the weight due to energy imparted by my arm, versus imparted by a fly line – or something that bent the blank.

Like all those engineers are likely to tell you, there’s more than a single way to do anything – including sinking a fly.

Profile can act like more weight if it’s catered to in the fly’s design. Wide and fat increases resistance to motion in any direction, especially fast sinking and lifting the rig back to the surface. Extra shot can drive anything to the bottom quickly, but is never much fun to lob for any length of time -considering the wear and tear on knots and especially  lighter tippets.

Recognizing this from past seasons and planning to switch to a lighter line size this year, allows me to preplan some of the flies needed, given that I have the luxury of tying flies that will be lighter, yet sink as quickly as needed due to their slim profile.

Just as important, a slim profile allows me to get them out of the water with alacrity, something quite desirable in a hook set, and may allow the rod to roll cast the rig to the surface to position for the next cast.

Spring being host to all those big dark artificials, stoneflies mostly; many of us will be cracking out big pillow shaped chenille monstrosities, replete with rubber legs and tungsten beads. That’s less of a bother with #5’s and #6’s, but using a #3 or #4 line they’ll be effective only in lobbing flies given both their weight and water resistance.

I decided to “channel” some of the old Polly Rosborough Golden stone designs to different colors as his design is a lighter weight than traditional fare, and allows me some additional flexibility while I prepare for a high water Spring – and a light line mainstay.

PRSBRust_Mustard

The shank is covered in lead from tail to whip finish, with only a bit of combed fur to impede sinking. It’ll fish where the fish should be without extra beads and split shot, and ensures an enjoyable heave compared to the weighted hamburger the other fellow is throwing.

Polly Rosborough design, colors by me

Thin silhouette is matched by other functional attributes consistent with a heavy nymph. Reinforcing wire on all the feather delicates, three coats of cement on the head, and a blood red tuft of fur making the underwing, adding a hint of attractor to the finished pattern.

Heavy wire is consistent with banging about the rocks, as is the thick spear point – on a fly destined to hook many things, some of which may be desirable.

Few anglers optimize their flies knowing what’ll be throwing it. Favorite patterns also restrict us a bit, given our reluctance to try anything new. On a big meal like a stonefly I’d suggest fish won’t be as selective, allowing us to add that additional dimension, something tailored for the characteristics of the rod.

That’s a lot of scientists insisting a few grams are worth many hundreds of dollars. No reason not to pay attention to the ease of your rig when fished, and the shape and style of its terminal tackle.

Don’t act so surprised, you knew they were going to do it

Them girls bought them all, honest! It’s like turning on the living room light to find your dog frozen into immobility as he rearranges that warm dent on your sofa cushion. It’s that same shocked expression that’ll bring a smile to your face as you kick his butt off the soft and fluffy …

There’ll be shock and amazement aplenty when all those fly tiers realize the folks pimping Whiting saddle hackle to women for hair extensions is their local fly shop.

Naturally, Whiting promised their first priority will always be fly tiers and fly shops – and the faddish teenyboppers that wanna-look-like-Miley-Cyrus can all go without (meaning they can lightfinger Poppa’s stash) .

So the fly shops pump their fist along with their customers, as it’s a boy’s life and “no gurls allowed …” – even though them counter-men adore all that taught flesh giggling their way through the upstairs dander.

Now that their supply is assured by Whiting, they’re onto eBay by the bucketload, selling dyed Grizzly hair extensions by the fistful. The Whiting shipment received and hustled into the back room where it’s dismembered into little 5 feather packets and sold for $10 – $15 each on ebay…

… giggle …

…while you mean old men have to do without.

grizzhairebay What’s not so smart is most of them are selling under the shop account, and was I the Whiting Hackle Company I might want to be bring a couple of those vendors up short, as I have enough troubles keeping the fly tying market in feathers without some sharp SOB hoarding all the good saddles in the back room – claiming them damn girls bought it all ..

Just click the Nomad Anglers picture above to see what they’re telling their customers …

The only reason I’m not completely incensed is because the selfsame idea crossed both our temporal lobe about five minutes ago, and you’re suddenly wishing you’d paid more attention to my articles on dyeing.

… and for those shops poised to unload onto the marketplace, don’t use words like “Cree” or “Furnace” to describe your hackle, hair dressers don’t use words like that, dummy.

Traverse City Orvis

Nor is it surprising that I’d find Orvis selling hair extensions to the gals. The seller above appears to be the Traverse City, Michigan Orvis store, called “Streamside Orvis.”

With Opening Day just over a month away, I’d accuse these shops of really poor timing at the minimum. Nothing like a shortage of hackle just when the customer base seeks it most.

The Sharp stuff is in the mail

The last of them mean old ladies in the Post Office line have finally sheathed their brooms, irate that I keep hogging all the pretty girls in the Priority mail section. I keep telling them it’s for a good cause, but at that age anything standing between them and a nap is the enemy.

If you sent me a note for scissors, they’re in the mail.

It seems like I may have curried favor with most of the TU chapters between here and the Asian Carp, with a sprinkling of US army servicemen (which I immediately hit up for exotic Afghan flightless birds downed by drones ), and other fishing clubs. I was pleased to send nearly 300 pair to about 24 different organizations.

Figure 10% actually live through the experience without slitting wrist and that’s 30 newly hatched hoarders for next season’s reality show …

I’ll continue to hoard all that defective metal and perhaps we can do this again ..

Free Scissors to club fly tying classes, Inquire Within

Sixthfinger Part of selling all those Sixth Finger scissors is the quality control each set recieves prior to shipment. I’ve got a fairly consistent failure rate of nearly 10% on every shipment of scissors I receive.

Which makes for a lot of functional scissors that are destined for my closet.

After checking with the tax man it appears I can give them away to casting clubs for their fly tying classes without incurring harm or obligation to either party. If you know that your club could use some freebie scissors, drop me a note.

It will be our understanding that you’ll not market them as the real product, rather what they are, “free defective samples so you can learn to tie flies for less cash.”

The defects that make these unworthy of sale include; uneven tips, too blunt of tip, uneven blades (width), rough closure, visible defect, or won’t cut at all. Only the last issue renders the scissors unusable, so I’ll remove those from the mix.

The scissors may be a mixture of sizes and metals (some tungsten and some stainless) and all will be usable.

I’ll need your request for quantity on club stationary or what passes for same, and a link to your club website for verification.

My email address is in the “about” page at the top of the screen, just drop me a note to reserve your space in the queue.

Cutips or backhoes, we’ll mine the goodie

It must’ve been the Alaska Gold marathon running all weekend in my living room, companion noise while I hacked, chopped, and ground up most of the fur bearing animals resident to North America.

By Monday evening all the bearings in my grinder sounded oval, but she still gnawed away noisily at anything I wadded into the blade area. I could see the big seam on the inside had filled up nicely with tiny fragments of everything fed it in the last couple of weeks, and while my heroes were emptying sluice boxes and nugget traps, I was busy scraping the mechanism collecting the rarest of all fly tying colors, “Ear Wax Yellow.”

ear_wax_yellow

… like white being the sum of all colors, it’s a relatively indescribable yellow, possibly even a light olive, but once you’ve given it a name you see it in a different light – it being the sum of a thousand buggy colors, and how it takes on any shade your whim imagines useful.

EWY_Nymphs

Add a little brown thread rib and it becomes a darker hue – like a true chameleon using the colors of the environment to make itself less stark or obvious.

The tail may wag this dog

Now that my likeness on your post office wall has been eclipsed by Edward Rist and his takedown of rare and exotic birds, and while my accidental brush with depravity rings hollow – compliments of a couple of gifted song birds and an imaginary affront to Audubon, the only way to reestablish myself as some form of natural history anti-Christ would be find something twice as rare and make flies with it.

Us fly tying degenerates being a vain crowd, proud of our hardscrabble hoarding nature, and determined to accumulate enormous collections of shoeboxes that hide the grisly remnants of odd fauna frozen in death. Unfortunately the competition is becoming fierce, with Jeffrey Daumer and Edward Rist making it tough to one up the competition…

We feel we may have rose to the occasion. It’s much tougher when there’s only one available, but it makes a sturdy and handsome tail …

Beard of the Prophet

… given this week’s callousness, it’s Hell I’m headed for surely, but which remains unknown. Hopefully Salman Rushdie has brushed up on his classics, as we’ve got a couple millennia of small talk coming .

The fly tying equivalent of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

He looked both ways before passing me the baggy, and being as it’s California I didn’t leave it out in the open for prying eyes, quickly tucking the goods into a breast pocket, before returning to the truck whistling innocently.

I might have been less eager if I’d known more about songbirds and whether you’re even allowed to keep one, let alone how many in possession and which warbler gives the electric chair without the luxury of trial.

Once the evidence was tucked into the freezer I did a little unrefined search to determine that I was now in violation of most fish & game legislation, both federal and state, and in addition to tempting fate with my “salvage” of three dead birds, the next knock on the door is liable to be the National Wildlife Service in full body armor.

Your cats can keep killing birds with no threat of legal reprisal. I don’t think that you can be held responsible, unless you have the feathers in possession. A few feathers in your backyard probably won’t get you into trouble. You, however, can’t legally even pick up a feather that incidentally falls off of a protected songbird. If it isn’t a game species, you probably can’t legally keep it. This is what we have to do. First, we need a federal “special purpose salvage” permit from US Fish and Wildlife. This give us the right to pick up dead migratory birds, as the feds have jurisdiction over migratory birds. Second, we need a state salvage permit as all songbirds are protected. In addition, I must keep detailed records as to what is done with every bird that comes into my possession. That is, is it turned into a study skin, disposed of or released. Finally I have to have a federal permit for any federally listed threatened species and another permit for any bald eagles. That means a separate permit for each specimen. Then there is a state permit for all state listed threatened species. What does this mean if you come into possession of contraband material without the above permits? Basically that you should leave it there, or dispose of it.

Assuming I was gifted the alleged animals, and my sense of utilitarian overcame my traditional adherence to the law, besides the five to life without parole, there’s a right way and wrong way of receiving some dripping lifeform your buddy, or circumstances, presents at your door.

First and foremost the legality of the affair, whether game animal or otherwise is always in question. Second, is the amount of time that transpired before that car bumper intersected the flock of dove, and whether you’re on the fresh or odious side of the bell curve.

If the corpse bounces to a stop at your feet, consider toeing it into a bush, given that there is still plenty of livestock on the creature, none of which will be leaving until the body begins to chill. Tomorrow would be much better to collect your booty, given you can bring gloves and a sterile baggy, versus carrying the bleeding SOB in your shirt pocket …

As did my mysterious benefactor, a couple of days in the freezer ensures that everything living on the host isn’t – and pretty much leaves a scentless little ice cube of sparrow, warbler, or linnet, or finch.

One or two is plenty, and given the wonderful soft hackles they possess, you’ll be gripped by this selfsame dilemma at some point. One or two only because most of the bird resembles every other songbird on the planet; a dull drab brownish gray top and a few gaily colored feathers on the breast or near the tail.

In ice cube form a couple of delicate pinches will remove most of the useable – too big a pinch brings the skin with it, which is undesirable as it’ll add moisture and a hint of decay into whatever drawer is utilized. Small pinches will remove only feather – and due to size there’s only about five pinches of feather worth having …

It_Was_A_Gift

I’d guess these are some form of finch or sparrow, as they have little in the way of color to identify them. As I often wander the owner’s field picking up turkey tails and flight feathers in the fall, my appetite for feathers is well known.

Small birds have small feathers, which is exactly what our traditional materials like Partridge and Grouse lack. Other than using a distribution wrap or something similar to reduce the flue length, soft hackles are often wildly disproportionate to hook size … which isn’t necessarily always a bad thing …

The issue is that small feathers can’t be wound or gripped by hackle pliers, as our hammy fingers lack the finesse to avoid breaking them.

Tiny hackle inserted into dubbing loop

I use them by throwing a quick dubbing loop, inserting the hackle into the loop with my fingers, then spinning the loop to reinforce the stem with thread. As long as the hackle is not tied onto anything, either by its tip or its butt, it will not break.

We've created a tougher stem

As the feather spins with the thread it will shorten, which is why neither end can be attached to anything. The feather will spiral about the thread and consume some of its length in those wraps. Two lengths of thread give it a real “stem” and we can attach hackle pliers and wind the hackle (while brushing it backward).

Olive Yellow Flymph

Note how the hackles are in proportion to the hook size. These are not stiff like Partridge fibers, they’re actually so soft and mobile that I’d characterize them as marabou with a hint of spine. Breathing on the fly will make all the hackle move to the far side, making them incredibly lively in the water – more so than the traditional soft hackles.

I’d recommend not using any head cement. Like marabou the fibers will soak any slop instantly, making them much less effective – and ruining the fly.