Printable View
I have not tried this on the water but possibly others may have. How would bucktail fibers do for tails? They are stronger and more durably than body hair and flair much less. They are a nuisance to get the fibers to be the proper length but they are quite "springy" compared to limp hackle barbs. Any experimenters out there? ;)
Just a reminder in case you forgot. The original Royal Wulffs that were tyed by Lee Wulff had bucktail fibers for the tail and wing. So did some of the other patterns in this same style too.
If you're just using a few for a tail, they're not nearly as hard to stack; maybe try trimming the butts down a bit before they go in the stacker.
Regards,
Scott
Deer hocks make great dry fly tails especally for Royal wullfs.
I just tied some dries today with moose mane fibres for tails. Hoping for more bouyancy and strength.
Moose body hair makes excellent dry fly tails. It is also good for parachute posts and "quill" bodies.
Hi Ray,
Both the gray Wulff and grizzly Wulff patterns call for brown bucktail for both the tail and wings. I have tied plenty of the grey Wulffs and the brown bucktail fishes very well for tailing.
As mentioned above, it is a little bit slow to tie with, because it has to be stacked, and bucktail, as you probably know, does not like to be stacked. I have found that to speed up the tying a little, I stack and then trim off the butt end of the long fibers so that a short set of fibers results. I then restack and repeat the trimming of the butts. The shorter stack of fibers stacks much more quickly than the stack of long fibers. You have to be carefull in doing this, however, and only take off a bit at a time. You can get too agressive in the trimming, and trim a lot of shorter fibers too much, and end up with a lot of fibers that are too short to use.
I also do the same thing using hand stacking. I do this by grabbing a small bunch with the thumb and forefinger of the left hand and trimming free with sizzors. I then grab the butts with the thumb and forefinger of the right hand and examining the bunch, I then grab the longer fibers using the left hand, toward the tips of the fibers, and then loosen the grip of the butts a bit with the right hand and then pull the longer fibers free of the bunch using the left hand. I then match up the tips of both bunches, combine the two bunches, and then trim off the excess length from the butts.
I repeat this process a few times until I have a bunch that is both short and thick enough to stack using a stacker. The key is to trim away as much of the excess length of the longer fibers as quickly as is possible. Short bucktail is not super easy to stack, but it is much easier than stacking longer bucktail fibers.
Regards.
Ganfolf
Long time since I posted, due to our baby being born (3months old on June 3rd, tomorrow), but I wanted to chime in with info that I'm sure has to have been mentioned before in a different thread somewhere, but I felt was worth restating (especially since I couldn't find it in a search). Running a dryer sheet over the bucktail section about to be clipped, just prior to clipping a section for stacking, has helped me out tremendously. Of course, clearing the minimal underfur from the butt ends helps as well, and pre-hand-stacking before using a hair stacker has helped as well. Might just be a coincidence, but I've found that all materials, not just bucktail, sticks less in plastic hair stackers versus the more readily available (in fly shops I frequent, at least) metal hair stackers. I've no experience with other device makeups (i.e. wood hair stackers, etc), so I can't speak one way or the other on those.
Just my experience, hoping to help. Your results may vary.
Best of luck, and tight wraps,
-ZugbugPete