soft hackle?

[JeffHamm]

I would highly recommend a partridge skin and a starling skin. If you shoot, you can get the starling yourself. It's a very good skin for soft-hackles, and highly under-rated. Don't make that mistake. One of my most productive soft-hackle patterns is Pritt's Water Cricket in size 14 (yellow body with black thread as a rib, starling hackle, and black head; you can do the body in orange as well, also good). A black bodied fly, size 16, with the hackle palmered half way down the body is also a very good pattern (Stewart's Black Spider is it's name as it was first published in Stewart's book in the 1800's, but he credits the fly to a fellow by the name of Baillie's (sp?), so some call it Baillie's Black Spider. Pritt also suggests something called a "Little Black", which is similar, but has a purple body).

There are good usable feathers at the "elbow" of the wings of ducks and pheasants (cocks and hen birds both), and others along the wing. If you have a male golden pheasant wing, the chestnut brown wing feathers are similar to woodcock and can be used as a substitute (though if you really get into soft hackles, you'll want a woodcock skin, moorhen, and snipe as well - ok, like most things fly tying, you'll want everything! )

- Jeff

[Denny]

I would like to add a bit about soft hackles. As most of you know I owned "Conranch Hackle"for over 15 years and have tied and fly fished since the age of 10. (ya, Old Guy, 79)
First off any bird feather can be tied for soft hackle flies, except the genetic (barbicle free) feathers found on a genetic rooster.
There are many feathers on a genetic rooster that are soft enough to tie and preform in the water like we FF folks want.
Before we had genetic birds to offer many tier/writers named many different game birds in patterns they wrote about. All of them will work. What I found was as I tied with different game bird feathers I had to fight a broom stick like stem and the barbs did not flex in the water like I think they should. My genetic hens, both mature and JVs, were bred for as fine and strong
stems as possible. Several years ago I had help with some photo work, under water so I could see the difference in all game bird feathers and my JV hens, which are true genetics. The results we found were that NO game bird feather worked as well as the JVs. This was the opinion of all persons involved.
What I saw in the tier friendly JV hens hackle was the barbs did not need to be tied in so heavily but sparse was better. ( I am of the school that thinks most of we tiers tend to over hackle. If you tie with good quality hackle, one needs less hackle).
I want movement in the hackle on a soft hackle and nymph. If you want to coat them with Sally Hansen, Ok, but you kill the action. Our underwater movies showed me the action of the genetic hen hackle was the only one that with the undulation I was looking for. Any hen feather will give you better action than any game bird. The big difference for me is the quality of the stem and how easily I can tie it, plus the softness of the hen barbs.
I no longer own the flock. Lars now owns it and is producing the birds like I did. He is a Sponsor, "Clearwater Hackle".
All of the above is just my own opinion. I still get out fishing, couple days a week and I catch way more fish than I should be allowed. About half my fishing is with soft hackle flies. Any FAOL member that would like to come out and spend a couple days with me, give me a call and this next Spring we will go Fishin. I will show you fish but you will have to catch your own.

Denny