That soft hackle journal blogspot is fantastic! Thank you for the recommendation! Ronr, I'm doing the same thing as you with the single hand rod conversions just by getting a new line setup. Love the Rio Single Hand Spey and especially the Single Hand Spey 3D. I put an OPST on an old 9 foot 3 wt XP ...

I've gotten into trout spey fishing wooly buggers, leech patterns, micro-intruders and of course teams of soft hackles. Has anyone here swung old fashioned non-salmon-fly-style winged wets on a trout spey setup? Any tips on fly design for this? I'll be giving that a serious try this coming year.

That's beautiful. Is that monocord slippery? What I mean is, does it hold the hackle tightly?

This great book, recommended to me by Davy Wotton as he taught me about wet fly fishing, is tremendously useful and informative.

Gorgeous wet fly, David. Will have to add this to the winters tying list. Thank you so much for posting it.

John, That Swiss CDC clamp is worth every penny. I've tied deer hair hackle wets that are truly unique, sporting a sparse hackle, one turn of deer hair, on a classic wet fly body. I put Dave Hughes' advice on tying wet flies with fur to get really sparse and effective fur collars on my wets using th...

ForumGhillie, If you want the pronounced taper, I agree the Coq de Leon capes don't have that. For " brahma-muddler type" ties and for long soft body hackle without a taper they are great. I might try using the Swiss CDC clamp to spin up an angled sampling of the CdL hen feather to see if ...

I strongly recommend the Whiting Coq de Leon hen saddles and capes for this. The speckled brown Coq de Leon hen feathers are soft and strong and spectacular, even if the flies I tie aren't yet.

Example: body hackle on this fly

Good looking fly. I think the wicked looking barb confers 00 status...

Size 8 TMC7999 and folded wing

Will be fishing folded wings since paired winging materials are scarce and my winging skills are underdeveloped.