Hook: Mustad 94842, Size #12
Thread: Pearsall's Gossamer 6B, Sherry Spinner
Hackle: Lemon wood duck flank
Tail: Lemon wood duck flank
Body: Blend of fox fur and hare's cheek spun in 6B silk on a Clark block

Moderators: William Anderson, letumgo
Good catch on the barb length, Lance. I stroked a substantial number of the barbs on one side of a wood duck flank feather down until the tips were even and then snipped off the whole bunch. I rolled this into a bundle and tied it in directly behind the hook eye with the tips pointing out using two loose wraps. Then I pulled the bundle back until I had the desired length sticking out and fussed with the barbs until they were more or less equally distributed around the hook before cinching down on the loose wraps. After making several tight wraps going back towards the bend, I trimmed off the butts before taking the thread back to the point where I wanted to tie in the tail. After adding the tail and the abdomen, I splayed the hackle barbs out and pulled them back over the body with my left hand, making thread wraps in front to bind them in place. The final step was to build the cone shaped head before doing a whip finish.gingerdun wrote:Great design Bill.
That is gorgeous. How did you do the hackle? The barbs were longer than that, weren't they?
Lance