Body experiment

[Mataura mayfly]

Whilst sitting around a table in Moira recently sharing coffee, Embacy Regals and talking of flies a wee trick was offered to me. All those feathers you use the barbs off, duck wing feathers, try stripping a section- like peeling a carrot- off of the feather stem. Use this to overwrap a coloured body and you get a translucent like covering that the underbody will glow through.

Back home I thought, OK, I can try this.

Orange fluro thread with a stripping of Mallard quill over. Wee touch of red dyed possum thorax and Hungarian Partridge hackle (as are all three).



Chartreuse fluro thread with Peacock quill strip.



Red Uni thread with Peacock.



They kind of look pastey white when dry, but give them a soaking and I can see what the two gentlemen at the table were talking about.







They also had a very good trick for dealing with stiff quill bodies that may be hard to wrap or brittle and prone to snapping whilst wrapping.

[Smuggler]

Hmm... I wonder how that would wrap over a wire body..
That's pretty dang amazing btw. I would never think of using that part of the quill, you may have hit a home-run my friend.

[Mataura mayfly]

Would work well over wire, may even trap a few air bubbles in the voids between wire and strip..........

No home run for me, was told to me by another meneber here whom has recently resurfaced. He is a hell of a lot more talented than I will ever hope to be....... maybe I should have asked him first.....

[letumgo]

Oh wow! Very cool! Love the dry/wet shots.

Would you care to share the "stiff quill bodies" technique? Sounds helpful.

[Mataura mayfly]

Geez.... I might get lynched from afar for giving away trade secrets!

Hope not....... but here goes, soaking the quills in warm water to which you have added a little hair conditioner. After all feather stems are made of keratin, same stuff our hair and fingernails are made of. The conditioner softens the fibres and makes the quill pliable, easier to wrap. It also shrinks a little on drying and adheres better to the fly.

[letumgo]

Thanks. It was nice knowing ya, Jeff. (humor)

[Mataura mayfly]

I am sure LF won't mind. I imagine he has a goldmine of information and tricks he could share with us all. When he is not spending the weekend competition fishing...... lucky dog!

[Smuggler]

It's amazing how people think of ideas like this. I'm gonna have to try this for sure.