Tying Parachute posts- A newbie question

I have learned how to tie parachute flies, faithfully following the instructions of Al Campbell and Skip Morris.
Al says he likes very straigh Calf or goat hair and Skip just says Calf Tail Hair.
Both then say 'or any other hair with parachute properties'
What constitutes the proper parachute properties. Does it honestly matter what you use to tie parachutes. Why cant I use bucktail or yak hair or honestly anything to tie parachutes? and yes I know I can experiment but what are the basic properties of a material that can be use for parachutes?
Thanks

Anything that you can wrap a hackle around pretty much. You may have to trim it, shorten it, bend it, put pliobond on it, or generally but not necessarily, alter it from it's orginal state to make it work.

Weirdest thing I've used but that worked really well and made perfect sense? The barbule from a feather, barbule pointing upwards, tapering shaft tied in leaving the right amount of 'post' to hackle.

Cheers,

MontanaMoose

Foam is a good parachute material. I like big fly fiber (i think thats what it is) its a mated synthic fiber that floats really well. Anything that looks good, antron yarn is another good one.

Heck, I've used yarn, antron, cdc puffs, and foam.
I haven't tried hairs like dear or elk, was afraid that wrapping a thread base on the hair would cause too much flair and make it harder than it's worth to wrap a feather around! It might be easiear without a thread base though.
Using buck tail is certainly ok. I try to even the tips as best I can though. That's the only way to control the height of the post without clipping the hair. But even that's ok, yarn and foam are clipped. Why not hair?!

Charlie

I use nothing but Hi-Viz or Antron. I like having all of the color choices.

Rawfish,

The basic answer to your question is that ANYTHING will work.

The properties that make it 'easier' to use are:

Stiffness and visibility. A stiff material is easier to wrap around and tends to keep upright better under use (on softer material you can wrap a thread base and alleviate this problem). Something that you can 'see' on the water is helpful.

A 'long' fiber or piece of material is also helpful. You can 'hold' it easily while wrpapping then trim it after you've wrapped the hackle.

Any of the yarns that are bouyant are great, as are most animal hairs that don't 'flare' (you can work around this if you want to, but why?...)

Foam, rubber bands, feathers (turkey t-base feathers are very good), I even saw one article that exspoused the use of wire (too heavy for me, but...), portions of unraveled fibers from a rope, A bit of silk ribbon coated in flex-a-ment, parts of silk flowers, and hollow flexible 'tubing' like they make for bodies all will work, plus many I've not thought of.

The real key here is to find something that YOU are comfortable working with. Try the ones that appeal to you and then decide which suites your fishing and tying style. All of them are effective and the fish don't care.

Good Luck!

Buddy

I use Turkey T-Base feathers or flats on all of my parachutes. They have a wonderfully even tip so it's quite easy to get a "perfect" looking post. They come in all sorts of colors (white, fl. orange, fl. pink, dun, etc.) and I think, to my eyes anyway, it just makes a prettier fly than calf hair/tail.

I'm not sure this really answered your question but hopefully it gave you an alternative material.

-Darryl