Quote Originally Posted by Allan View Post
Cheech, and others,

In general, do any of you think the breeders have, in a sense, gone too far insofar as breeding short fibered hackle? I mean the present stuff is great for say, 14 down to even 28. But what about 12's, 10s, 8's, and Variants? Even good long, straight, stiff tailing, regardless if the feather comes from the neck or the scapula, is difficult to find. And yes, I know what we tiers had years ago. So you need not point that out. But where do they go from here and are we tiers sizing ourselves out of moderate size dry flies by our 'desire' for hackle with certain attributes? Just asking.
Allan, I was of that opinion until the last couple or three years. I had really just been focusing on saddles and they were getting smaller and smaller and the size range seemed limiting. So I think the biggest mind-blower for me was the first time I really checked out some of the newer capes (Whiting and Collins especially). I tell people if they haven't bought a good cape recently, to go check 'em out. It's insane. And the size variety is incredible. I'm getting 4 dry flies on most of the #14 - #18 cape feathers these days.

So I stick to my midge saddles for a lot of the 18's to 22's but capes are more and more my go-to hackle choices for dries. If you want to see some cool hackle, check out the Eurohackle Saddles from Whiting. Crazy long feathers with sizes from a few #16's and a few #10's with a lot of #12' & #14's.