Robert Traver, Herbert Hoover, et al.

The other day, I visited my local fly shop looking for a brown dry fly neck. I was astounded to find no dry fly hackle
there. I was told that there was so little interest in dry fly fishing they stopped stocking them. the only hackle they had were large ones for streamers etc . I was floored! Has our sport changed that much? Have we lost the ( My Opinion) spirit of fly fishing? Competitive fishing? Are we missing something here? Have we lost the wisdom of Robert Traver ( Testament of a Fisherman), and Herbert Hoover (Fishing for Fun and to Wash your Soul.) If you have not read these, I highly recommend them.
I do not mean to criticize anyone There is room for all. Just sounding off! Pat

I’ll use nymphs on tailwaters in April when the water’s too cold for dry fly activity but after that it’s all on top for me. Plenty of dead chicken parts in the shops in Montana.

Regards,
Scott

I am primarily a dry-fly fisherman. If absolutely nothing is working, I will occasionally go to the dark side and tie on a nymph.

steve

Pat,

I suspect you are looking at a very narrow and I mean very narrow regional situation. That particular 'fly shop' has customers who only fish flies of have a need for feathers of a particular type, obviously not dry fly. Expand outward and I hope you find a shop that carries some decent necks. All is not lost, as the spirit of fly fishing, be it dry or wet, still lives on and in many areas is getting even bigger and more popular.

Larry ---sagefisher---

Thanks for your comments, Larry. Hope you are right.

Admittedly, I catch mo re fish going wet then dry - But that's not to say I'm exclusively wet! But I've never heard of such a statement as a lack of interest in dry flying material. I just recently er-stocked on some tying materials, and here's from where .....

https://www.jsflyfishing.com/index.p...dry+fly+hackle

I also think that the art of dry fly fishing is slowing down. I worked in a shop for about two years, we carried Collins necks, though we sold some we didn't sell the quantity compared to synthetics and other material. I do tying shows and when I look at what other tyers are tying there are very few tying dry flies.

I think some people have the misconception that dry flies are harder to tie than wets and nymphs. I got this impression from participating in and hosting fly swaps. They will naturally not invest a lot of money into dry fly hackle but leave those flies to the pros in Thailand.

Maybe so. Dry fly hackle isn't cheap.

I wouldn’t feel bad about your local fly shop not stocking dry fly hackle. I bought about 50 capes and saddles this past year, and I don’t think I got more than a couple from my local fly shop in SE PA. It is a multi-location fly shop that is one of the largest on the east coast. They stock very few, if any, dry fly higher quality necks and capes these days, and it’s not that I didn’t want to buy from them, it’s that they told me they couldn’t get them from Whiting. I therefore have to believe that the demand for dry fly quality hackle is still there overall, but perhaps not in your local market, for whatever reasons.

The other thing is that a lot of dry flys simply aren’t tied with hackle. Look at all the fly patterns that use hair or CDC in lieu of hackle these days.