In your experience, does woodchuck hair and/or the underfur tend to have floating characteristics or does it need to have floatant applied to it to stay on top at all?
Thanks,
Joe
In your experience, does woodchuck hair and/or the underfur tend to have floating characteristics or does it need to have floatant applied to it to stay on top at all?
Thanks,
Joe
Joe, The only fly I've used much of that is woodchuck, is the All-chuck caddis.(it's in the files here) It floats wonderfully, without floatant, but as with any fly, it will eventually need to be dried off. Very effective fly, too.
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I cannot answer your question, but, I do use woodchuck hair but I use it on streamers and other below the surface flies. If I were you, I would send Peter Frailey that question and I feel he will be able to answer it because he uses woodchuck a lot. fishingwithflies.com is his web site, I think.
Warren
Fly fishing and fly tying are two things that I do, and when I am doing them, they are the only 2 things I think about. They clear my mind.
Bob Kramer's Mossy Hopper is tied mostly with woodchuck - guard hair wing/tail and underfur body; stays on top pretty well, although floatant certainly helps
here's the SBS if your interested:
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/bb/s...ssy-Hopper-SBS
Regards,
Scott
I fished a Chuck caddis many years ago, popularised by Eric Leiser. The hair is very stiff a had nice markings for a caddis wing. Basically it was a Solomon caddis (deerhiar wing) but with wood chuck. Easier to tie but yes it needs to be dressed.
Gene
Here is a great article by Peter Frailey about using Woodchuck. I use allot of myself. Frailey has some excellent woodchuck patterns on his site and in this article: http://globalflyfisher.com/patterns/woodchuck/
Mike
"The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of that which is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope" -John Buchan
Regards,
Silver
"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought"..........Szent-Gyorgy
There are plenty of flies that use woodchuck hair for wings and those flies have been around a long time. Many have been already mentioned. One not is the Ausable Wulff. Therefore, I'll opine that the hair floats well enough. Woodchuck hair is excellent for streamer wings, i.e. Llama. The fur is kind of coarse and makes nice buggy bodies but in that case the floating properties are not important.
woodchucks do not "preen" themselves with any oil (such as water-loving mammals such as beaver, muskrat, mink, etc) and their hair is not especially hollow, so in my experience it has no special floating characteristics. 'chucks are common to the point of being pests in most areas of the east, with similar creatures across most of the other parts of the US. Would be best to go shoot one yourself and give it a try, or at least pick up a fresh road kill.
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