Ron Eagle Elk wrote:I recognize that fingerprint from a post office flyer. I'm calling the FBI. Oh...wait, no cell service here. Guess your safe.
You can tell it isn't my print, it isn't stained with gorilla glue.
Or have chunks of it missing, which is a too often painful recurrence in my trade.
Been some interesting comments on this thread. I am guessing bigger hooks is not the answer owing to the rods of choice being on the lighter scale. In my own experience fish size does not factor in a lot over here, many a 24" plus will not move off station for anything over a #16 at times and seldom look at a #6 unless it is a baitfish imitation and he or she is feeling particularly aggressive.
I do not get a lot of choice in hen hackle here, hardly any of the local stores stock them and look at you strangely if you ask for them. So I have to order online or harvest them myself, colour and quality are a big risk if I order online and I get what I get, making use of what I can when they arrive. If you can find someone that keeps a few hens for meat and egg production, make them your friend. Capes and saddles from farm yard stock can be a bit of a lottery, but often the price is right. Often overlooked and often discarded are the wings of said hens, both upper and lower covert feathers on the wings can yield some fine hackles, often they have a curved face that allows you to dictate where the best length is for a certain size of hook.
Then you have to ask the question, are they fishing flies or display flies? Often we are coerced by what we see others tie or what we read in publication as to the "ideal" hackle length and if you look in a lot of especially British older tying manuals you will often find colour prints showing long full hackles, almost contradicting the style of hackle we try to aim for. I am guessing these larger hackled flies still caught their share of fish and trout have not evolved that much further...... have they? Maybe in high pressure waters where trout see a LOT of imitations it might make a difference, but I would tie a few with your bigger feathers and see if there is a huge difference in takes with either style.
The other option is to trim the hackle with scissors before you wrap. Blasphemy I know! But it is actually recommended in some tying books of old. If you are dealing with feathers that have soft barbs from the tip to the stem it might be worth a shot and help you use some of the left overs.
Or you could "pinch" the hackle barbs to length after the fly is tied.
There are a lot of tricks and ways of wrapping stripped barbs to form a "correct" hackle length from a "too big" feather. I have searched out and tried a lot of them, owing to the quantity of low quality feathers I have in stock and cannot bring myself to cull out, they work, but given the option I still prefer to wrap the stem in the good old fashioned way!
