Steven,
I was opining that perhaps the fact that hackle feathers have tremendously improved over the last 50 years MIGHT have had something to do with the sizing of fly proportions 60-80 years ago. Long hackled fibers on hackle feathers have always been available on necks, but, shorter, usable ones have not.
I started tying when the primary source of hackle was in the form of India necks. These necks lent themselves to longer fibered feathers. Darbee did raise his own birds to get better hackle, but I can assure you it was nothing compared to today's great hackle.
So, as the opining goes, if your hackle was primarily long fibered....say a "size 10, but you wanted your fly to sit upright on a size 12 hook, how might you adjust for that in the length of your wings and tail ?
You can't really argue that this influenced their proportions as we will probably never know for sure.
Just a thought of mine.
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