Feathers do dry out over time, due to loss of moisture and oils. The same applies to us humans, how many of you get chapped lips, and rough hands when you are exposed to extreme sunlight and high temperatures, or out and about during cold weather? You go for a long soak in a warm tub of water, then you apply some skin moisturizer to rejuvenate your skin cells for lost oils.


When using hackle for wrapping around a hook shank, I have a plastic tray (recycled microwave food tray) that I place two wet paper hand towel sheet in, lay the hackle between the top and bottom wet paper towels (if you had a cover for the tray, that helps speed up the process. I then let them air dry, and if needed I apply some moisturizer lotion to my finger-tips, and transfer this to the hackle, with gentle stroking of the hackle.

I use "Oil of Olay" because of a FAOL article written by Marv Taylor "Smell Tracks", what you use does make a difference.

Certain odors that are transfered to the fly can cause a fish to refuse your perfectly dress fly. Some odors are transfered by the person to the material, other might have been in the material from its tanning or manufacturing process. Most of these odors us humans cannot detect, but a fish can!

~Parnelli