FLYMPH FORUM

The very archetype of what a Greenwell's should look like.

Murray - There is a lot (repeat LOT) of variation in the size of feathers from one starling skin to the next. I have ordered some starling skins on-line and later found a shop in Roscoe, where I could hand-pick the starling skins. After seeing the wide variation in starling skins (and the feather sizes), I was really surprised. Some skins had very long, slender feathers, while others had wider spade shaped feathers (my personal favorite). Keep in mind that each starling skin also had nice variation in feather types (back, neck, coverlet, tail, wing, rump, belly feathers) to choose from. They all have uses, especially for small fishing flies (anything under size 10), down to size 32 (if you can see to tye that small).

Starling is quit beautiful (nice glossy iridescent shine, even when dyed). Many of the feathers have very delicate stems, making them excellent for making small flies, but requiring an equally delicate hand when wrapping the feathers. It takes a few flies, to get accustomed to working with these feathers, but well worth the effort.

This gives me a good excuse for sharing some photos I took of a couple of my starling skins.
(top view)
(bottom view)





Good luck, and please show us the results of your explorations of the new material. We would love to see the results...

Ray very nice pics and thanks for sharing those and information with us. It has been mentioned and you have mentioned dyed skins. Just wondering here, with an already fairly fragile feather have you or anyone here experienced more breakage when using the dyed feathers?

Regards, Jerry

Ray ~ You've captured the starling irridescence (sp?) as well or better than anything I've seen previously; very nicely done!

tie2fish wrote:Ray ~ You've captured the starling irridescence (sp?) as well or better than anything I've seen previously; very nicely done!

Ray, I agree. These pics really do an amazing job of showing the range of hackles on one of these skins. I happen to have quite a few skins because I see something different each time I find one, more brown tones, more greens, hackle shape and if there is enough selection to compare you can see the differences between juveniles and mature birds and when they were harvested. That kind of variety really opens things up for some nice substitutes. Wonderful pics.

Philip, nice Greenwells.

w

Jerry - I've used a number of different dyed & bleached starling skins, but I have not noticed a difference between the fragility of the feathers. I would be very interested to hear if others have noticed a difference. In my mind, starling is just one of those feathers that are naturally delicate.

Here is something else to consider. Cock, hen, poult (young), and old starling have different colors and sizing of the feathers. Spme of the old tyes call different aged birds and sexes.

To add a little to Ray and Narco's answers to Jerry's question I have not tied enough with dyed to comment, but feel the cock bird feathers of an older bird are strongest and poult or young bird taken before first moult to be the most delicate (as well as being the most subtle coloured).

I have been tying with the picric dyed starling I got from Finney flies. Starling is the queen of s/h's