How Can You Tell?

[Allan]

On another thread 'jay' commented about a fly not having a "palmered thorax". The thorax on the particular fly did have a hackled thorax and this got me thinking, or at least got me to ask this question:
What do you think differentiates a 'palmer' from a 'hackled' area? In other words, how far apart do the wraps of hackle have to be to be considered 'palmered' versus just 'hackled'? I'm thinking that edge to edge or even very very close, as in a Bivisible, is one thing and clearly denotes hackled. But, as long as there's visual separation between the wraps along the body or some part of the fly, that denotes that area as being 'palmered'. What do you think?

Allan

[AlanB]

You're on the right lines there, I'm sure, Allan. To me it comes down to the visibility of what you put under the palmered hackle. So in a fly like this one where you can clearly see the gold body you could describe it as palmered.

But this one has a solid hackle, wound in touching turns. Should we call it a "body hackle" to distinguish it?

Cheers,
A.