I was going through all my deer hair and I ran across a piece that I labeled Costal Deer Hair Neck Area. It has been a while and I have no idea what I bought this for. Any ideas what I can use this for? I was thinking possibly comparaduns but it doesnt look like it will flair properly.
Thanks in Advance
Living in CA, and knowing a lot of deer hunters, I get so much coastal deer hair, if you are talking pacific coast blacktail, a subspecies of mule deer. I use it in place of deer hair, using the types of hair interchangably, and in place of elk hair in a lot of patterns too. Probably because I am not too finicky about following pattern recipes exactly.
I have had good luck using coastal deer in comparadun wings.
I’ve bought a few packs of coastal that wouldn’t flare very well and just used them for downwing patterns instead:
X2 Caddis
Chuck’s Caddis Variant (this pattern has a little calf body hair on top of the deer)
Yellow Sally
Learned my lesson about buying deer hair for winging in packs and now get all my stuff from Blue Ribbon Flies. When it comes to deer hair (and pretty much everything else) those folks know what their talking about.
Regards,
Scott
I saw a video of someone using coastal deer hair, I think it was Dave McPhail. He was looking for the black tip fibers to use. If I can find it I’ll post it. Meantime try YouTube and see what comes up.
I get most of my deer hair from these guys:
http://www.worleybuggerflyco.com/naturesspiritt/ns_deer_hair.htm
…good stuff and my local shop carries it…I use Coastal deer for most of my Caddis dries, in smaller sizes…
Here is a good article on what to look for in a Coastal Deer patch coloration:
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/fotw/2010/fotw20100719.php
PT/TB 
Theoretically coastal deer hair is less inclined to flair. I’ve heard of people who prefer it for collars, but not heads, of muddler minnows.
Ed
Useful for comparadun hair, small caddis and the like.
I was taught NOT to use hair with black tips. The reason being that the black tips are solid and therefore not bouyant. If you’re going to be tying flies that require some, but not a lot of flare like comparaduns, you should examine ‘coastal’ hair and make sure the piece has hair that is straight, of uniform length, has hardly any underfur and does not have black tips. You can also find whitetail deer with the same properties. It all depends on many factors like time of the year when the deer was killed, its age, geographic location, and other factors. Regardless of the type of deer: coastal, mule, whitetail, dwarf, sitka, etc. hair with black tips for floating flies is usually a no no.
Allan
Odd, When I was in Blue Ribbon Flies (basically home of the modern comparadun) they helped me pick deer hair for sparkle duns. You do want black tips, but the shortest possible. You want just as short of black tip as possible. Believe me, the hair works very well.
Also, in one of Craig Mathews’ videos, he explains about selecting deer hair with the extremely short black tips.
When I was a kid there were all kinds of “nature” shows about caribou and they all spoke about how bouyant caribou hair is to explain why caribou float so high in the water… and they do float far higher in the water than any other deer… Some years ago we shot a caribou bull that ran into the lake before expiring. I gutted him while he floated beside the boat. The guts from a caribou are something quite different from other deer as they eat lichen almost exclusively so they need lots of retention time in the gut.
Please bear with me here as I am getting to a good point…
Anyway, we momentarily let go of the caribou and it sank lilke a stone, hollow hair and all! It took a little doing to get that caribou lassoed up off the bottom.
When a caribou swims all that hollow hair, especially up around the neck and back, is completely out of water… and has absolutely no effect on caribou bouyancy… it is that immense gassy gut that floats the 'bou.
Now, how do wings on your dry flies aid floatation? Mine are up out of the water…
art
Hap, you are correct the wings are out of the water, BUT I usually have a gassy gut when fishing.
I apologize, I couldn’t resist. EdD made me do it.
Mr Hap, sir, Thank you, thank you, thank you!
That has been my contention for years. Archimedes principal starts “When a body is totally, or partially immersed in a fluid…” When the upthrust of the fluid exceeds the mass of the body it floats. This is what we call buoyancy. A dry fly that stays completely above the surface, ie. stands on the hackle points (if it has any) and tail, like, say, a classic Catskill dry, is not immersed in the fluid. Archimedes does not apply. For flies that sit down in the surface it may apply, but a far greater influence on these flies is surface tension. I would go as far as to say that buoyancy is not significant until you are fishing a larger fly like muddler, Chernobyl Ant or Bomber.
I would be interested to know, from someone who understands more about fluids, what effect fly floatant has on surface tension?
Grollocking deer under water sounds like a great idea. I always did this with rabbits, but they are easier to handle. The first rule, as demonstrated by one of the locals here, is to be sure that the deer is properly dead before trying to grollock it, or put it inside your vehicle! It can lead to “interesting times” if they come back to life.
Cheers,
C.
What am I missing here?
A well tied comparadun or sparkle dun floats well even though the body has broken the miniscus.
I think I must be missing the point.
There is no way that any dry fly, classic or not, stands on its hackle points. Think about the pin experiment. Place a pin on water tip down, it sinks. Place the pin flat, it floats in the surface tension.
“Catskills float on their hackle tips” is one of the bigger myths in flyfishing. It’s the hackle to the sides that support the fly.
“The calf tail wing helps floatation” is another myth. If you need the calf tail to support the fly, the fly already is already not fishing as a dun.
Comparaduns, though, are supported by the wing, although one could argue that the hair to the sides represents legs.
I believe the reason they (Blue Ribbon) suggest black tips that are “the shortest possible” is that the company cannot get tips without some black. However, you can read into that that tips, absent black entirely, would be even more preferred.
Byron - And now I have to ask this question, what do you mean when you say, “basically home of the modern comparadun”? Is there an old comparadun? I was taught about tying a comparadun and about the coastal deer (or other useful species of deer) needed for this pattern by Al Caucci and tyed this pattern for him and his Delaware River Club for several years. I think he rates as being a knowledgeable person to teach about the material and the fly pattern. He sought and wanted hair without black tips used for his comparaduns.
Allan
Allan,
That’s sort of what I mean. BRF didn’t invent the pattern. They modified it slightly and very much popularized it over the last 10 years or so (IMHO).
I think this “popularization” of an old pattern happens quite often
Given Craig’s unique position as author, co-owner of BRF which directly interacts with a massive number of fishers and tiers, has contributed greatly to the popularization of an old pattern.
Make sense?
I’m calling the replacement of the tail with a zelon shuck “modernization” of an old pattern
Coastal deer hair is my hair of choice for a number of my favorite patterns. Specifically the May Haystack. If you look in the FOTW archives, July 19, 2010 has the pattern along with an article on coastal deer hair.
Ralph
Al Caucci published his comparadun pattern in 1975 in his book with Bob Nastasi called Hatches. Caucci freely admits that the comparadun is an adaptation of Fran Better’s Haystack. “I designed my first Compara-dun in the mid 1960’s adapting the pattern from an old Adirondack pattern called the ‘Haystack’ It was introduced to me by Francis Betters, who runs the famous Adirondack sport Shop…”
I believe that Craig Mathews realized that low riding flies like the comparadun were often taken as late stage emergers rather than mature duns. This is especially true if the fly has caught a fish or two and sits even lower in and not on the film. The sparkle-dun is a misnomer. It is not a dun, but a stage T5 emerger; and the zelon tail fibers imitate a trailing shuck. The wing represents the emerged drying wing.
If the fly sinks even further with the tail and body under the film, the “wing” above the surface represents the emerging insect with the fly body and xelon representing the nymphal body with the nymphal thorax flush against the bottom of the film and the insect (represented by the wing) pulling itself out of the split nymphal thorax.
Like the parachute, the sparkle dun is a universal emerger/dry. Hence, it’s popularity.
Specific emerger/Cripple patterns like the Quigley emerger or cripple incorporate some of the elements of the sparkle-dun.
