We use a lot of rabbit strips for the leeches we tie in huge quantites here... We buy hides at a local craft store and cut them into strips. For our purposes, and for anyone using strips you want the terrible rabbit skins, not the good ones. Both hide thickness and amount of fur determine how good a strip will be for a fly. Too much leather and the fly weighs a lot more, fast! It also takes forever to soak through, sink, and swim properly. Too much fur also slows down the speed with which it sinks and swims.

Then, once you get a plump fly fishing you realize it takes a LOT more effort to get it out of the water and then huck it back out there.

I am in the middle of tying 5 dozen Dali Lamas and my rabbit strips are horrible! For each fly I am skiving the leather edges and trimming as much leather as I can. To say it makes tying them slow is an understatement!

Rabbit is great dubbing and it is easy to add good synthetics to it for sparkle, UV color, or plumping up. Tying Polly Rosborough's Fuzzy Nymphs with rabbit and adjuncts is easy and the rabbit makes the dubbing rope more durable because it binds with the other materials really well.
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