I picked up a grizzly hen saddle/cape combo, mainly to use as winging material for dries, but also to play around with for wet fly hackle. One thing I’ve not noticed is many people using it for their woolly buggers, so I decided to tie up a few. At the vice, these flies look amazing especially when you tie in the feather so that the hackle has a subtle taper that looks like it will blend quite nicely with the marabou tail. From my eye it looks like these are going to have a lot of motion and flash under water.
Am I totally barking up the wrong tree here and there’s a reason people don’t use this stuff like this? Or have I just had some strange Google-Fu mishap and somehow managed to not stumble upon this use?
I tried to take some photos of these bad boys, but as I mentioned in another thread the camera I have is just too clunky to make that happen.
Used them for years; great feathers that give lots of motion. If I want them a little sparser, I strip the barbs off one side of the feather. The only drawback to hen hackle is their lack of length. For bigger flies, multiple feathers may be needed.
So far I’ve only been pulling from the saddle and it looks like one feather is good for a size 8. It’s a Whiting set, and I hear tell that they’re feathers tend to be longer than some, but I’ve no real basis for comparison.
On the first fly I was concerned about the taper, but it gives the fly a nice look if you tie the base in at the tail. If the fish think it’s half as pretty as I do, they’ll at least stop to look.
If you’re looking to play with some more colours, take some of your grizzle feathers and dye them with Kool-Aid. A google search should bring up information on how to do this, and there are some threads here where it’s been covered as well. I’ve dyed some feathers using food-colouring in water (3 or 4 dropps in water is enough, then heat the water and soak the feathers in it). Add some alum (from the spice section of the grocery store) as a fixative. Food colouring might well enough, not sure yet. Haven’t noticed any dye run off yet, but haven’t fished them long enough yet to really know.
Jeff,
That sounds about right. For bigger flies, I’d tie one feather in the middle and one at the head, wrap the middle feather back to the tail, advance the wire rib up to the middle, then repeat the sequence with the next. Looked okay and the fish seemed to approve.
Take JeffHamm’s suggestion and play around with Kool-aid to dye some feathers; you can get some very cool effects.
I’m definitely going to look into the Kool-Aid and food coloring options. Given I have a five year old, I have a rather large supply of both on hand at all times.
I’ve been doing the “hen hackle” thing for years. I use only one feather per fly for Buggers but have long ago noted that Whitings are longer with less severe taper than Metz.
On the other hand, the small Metz cape feathers with the less pointed tips are better for dry fly wings and the larger ones are softer for use as wet fly collars. IMHO.
In regards to dying the feathers. Someplace buried in FAOL was an article or topic where the writer said to stick the feathers in a glass of water, put in a few drops of food coloring and some vinegar and zap it for one minute. I have tried this and it works great. Only problem would be color limitattions.
I have some hen saddle, seems too small for buggers. What I have is Hoffman (Pre Whiting)
The packaged Whiting bugger packs are awesome, though. Soft enough to go with the flow.
Yeah, if you’re a proctologist… Seriously, if you don’t have the right color to start with, or aren’t going to dye a bunch, just buy the stuff. It’s not that expensive.
Seriously, if you don’t have the right color to start with, or aren’t going to dye a bunch, just buy the stuff. It’s not that expensive.