Coq De Leon

[hap]

Goddess
There are more feathers on a top grade and the best have even better feathers... Except their grading systems involve barb length and barb count mostly and do not seem to include stem stiffness. Which is why I often steam when I want to speed things up and want the hackle to roll exactly the right way every time.

New tyers have a serious disadvantage. They never learned to tie tiny flies with the old Chinese rooster capes. I remember being utterly amazed by Hoffman saddles (early '70s) with fine 9" hackles. Today they would not make any grade!

There are so many incredible soft hackles to choose from that paying a lot for soft speckled chicken does not make sense to me. Unfortunately the folks skinning huns seem to cut off the head rather than skinning it. The best tiny soft hackles are on the head. Lots of quail have tinier feathers and juvenile game birds usually have a pale trailing edge on their feathers that really adds a lot IMO.
art

[herefishy]

I think one of the funnier things I have heard of regarding breeding genetic hackle birds was that they also had to breed for longer legs, to keep the feathers out of the dirt.

[Fly Goddess]

I think one of the funnier things I have heard of regarding breeding genetic hackle birds was that they also had to breed for longer legs, to keep the feathers out of the dirt.

LMAO, but it makes sense!

[John Rhoades]

I think one of the funnier things I have heard of regarding breeding genetic hackle birds was that they also had to breed for longer legs, to keep the feathers out of the dirt.

You should hear Henry Hoffman talk about this. He has a display board showing the progress of his hackles from generation to generation. Listening to him is one of the most fascinatiing discusions I think I've ever had related to fly tying.

[JohnScott]

Joni -

If you are still looking for a full Coq-de-leon cape, call Jimmy. As of this morning, he had half a dozen or more Whiting CDL capes on the rack. $18 for bronze and $27 for silver, with some variety of colors.

John

[Fly Goddess]

Sweet! I will call him! Thanks. See you in a little over a month!

[Paco Soria Rocafort]

HI
sorry bad engkish
yes I sell some years ago the very beatiful coq de leon feathers to some USA tiers, some years ago 1 euro cost 0.82 dollars so it was a good bussines for us, unfortunallly with euro dolar change in the 1.40-1.20 we can not offer good , and compettitive price for usa tiers. the superbe quality feathers are expensive , each rooster only have a few of them in the cape , if they are, we dont kill the rooster so breeding and manual collection selection and rooster cares are expensive , too expensive for us to pay our cost in euros and sell it in dollars.
a superbe quality 12 feathers bundle maybe will cost 8-10 dollars , and I believe nobody wants to pay this price for it

[ducksterman]

What a wonderful thing this internet is...

Thank You, Sir!