Partridge?

[Benjo]

I always see these patterns that have partridge swept back as legs, emergers and soft hackles mostly. My problem? I can't seem to find a partridge shoulder feather that is small enough to extend only to the barb, they always seem to be too long. Is hungarian the wrong kind of partridge or are the ones I've had too old with larger feathers?

[Garic]

In my experience the bags of loose partridge feathers are too big, and I have been told to buy a full skin instead, haven;t got round to it yet so can't comment. Hope this helps

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Born to fish, forced to work.

[Bamboozle]

Garic is right; if you are buying loose feathers most are HUGE.

I buy whole skins and at times spend more time choosing them than I do buying dry fly necks.

[AlanB]

Benjo,
The advice you have recieved is sound also try tying in the feather by its tip rather than as you would a hackle. There are smaller barbs at the tip even on larger hackles. Here is the method I use for a partridge hackle.

As you can see this hackle has barbs that are way to big fot this fly but by using the shorter ones at the tip are right. Others will disagree about tying in at the tip but we have been doing it like that for over 400 years here, so what would we know?

Regards,

Alan.

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"


[This message has been edited by AlanB (edited 20 July 2005).]

[This message has been edited by AlanB (edited 20 July 2005).]

[This message has been edited by AlanB (edited 20 July 2005).]

[JME]

Good tip from Alan and one I use when I no longer have any smaller feathers.

Not sure about Hungarian partridge as I always use English partridge. A full skin is not too expensive and you can get tiny feathers around the neck for tying small soft hackles/spiders.

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JME
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