To go along with the post about blood quills, Has anyone tried palmering marabou feathers. I still have not found if tying it by the base or tip works better. Anyones feed back would help.
You need thin stems in the marabou feather to palmer it, thats why I was asking about the blood quills. If that means thin or thick stems, or if all marabou is called blood quills.
What if you use thick stems but split them some how?
Cheers,
MontanaMoose
I tie the marabou in by the tip to make a tail and then wrap the marabou feather around the thread and palmer it up the hook shank.
Makes a nice leech pattern.
Rick
If you use a thread that you can split with your bodkin, put the marabou in the split thread, either after you have stripped of the quill, or put the herl on one side of the quill through the split thread, as much of the herl in length as you want, and trim it off the quill.
Then spin your bobbin-holder and wind on as a hackle.
Another way is to get a very large Bulldog type paper clip, clamp it over the herl while it is still on the quill, trim off the quill, leaving the cut ends of the herl protuding from the Bulldog clip, the ends now go into the split thread, tighten up the thread and release the bulldog clip and then spin into a hackle.
Sounds a bit complicated, but with a little practise, it’s not difficult.
Or! you can spend about $50.00 or so on that Swiss Magic Hackle Kit. Which really does the same thing.
Thanks for the advise, but using a loop or split thread doesn’t seem to produce the same look as palmering. It’s just tough to find a lot of marabou with thin enough stems.
Guess I should have just asked if there is a kind of marabou that have very thin stems or a company that sells marabou with a high amount of thin quills.
Thank you.
buy the tip as mentiond you can make a rope with the feather and thread if you have a rotary vice
just wrap the feather around the thread a few turns
then hold the feather and thread and use the rotary to
twist it then simply wrap it if you have to much feather left then just tie off and cut the remander
kind of like you would do it your thread breaks .
If you look at Jack Gartside’s web site he has some nice pictures of blood marabou. On several of his flies, particularly the soft hackled streamer and the Beastmaster, (and Beastmaster General) he describes how to tie in and wind the bloods including step by step pictures. Jack has been working with these feathers for quite a few years.
Thank you John, thats kinda what i was looking for. But what is the site? Can you post a link, or pm me the site address? Thank you muchly.
Sorry jackgartside.com is the web site. While the site doesn’t seem to have lots of activity it has tons of info and is pretty cool. I hope you find it informative.
Very nice site, thanks for spreading the word about it. And thats exactly what I wanted, too. Thank you.
The very tip is the thinest blood quills or select marabou rotary vise is the best for this application.GOOD LUCK AND TAKE A DEEP BREATH Jcntheriver
Blood quill marabou has a very fine stem which are suitable for palmering. I stip the base fibers up to the point where the stem narrows down and is flexible. I tie in by the base and palmer until I run out of feather then tie off. Not all marabou is called blood quill, most of the better shops stock it. These guys have had excellent blood marabou in the past. http://www.stoneriveroutfitters.com/index.htm
tie in by the tip and fold (as you would for a soft hackle collar) the marabou prior to wrapping.
for a cool stillwater bugger, you can use marabou instead of hackle, but when i tried this, the marabou fibers stuck out WAY too long…any way around this???
Thanks for all the help. I have found both ways useful (tieing by the tip or base) depending on the profile I’d like to obtain. But now I know what to ask for when I am looking for the materials. Thanks again. And if you havent already check out this site: http://www.jackgartside.com/index.htm It helped me out and has a lot of tips and tutorials for different patterns. Thanks to JohnD for the reference to it.
I have been interested in the Soft Hackle Streamer for a few years and have tried both ways (butt or stem). I don’t think it matters much because you only use the thin part of the quill either way. I have collected a few links to send to friends only recently, so here they are - both ways are included.
http://www.flyfishingconnection.com/articles/current/82/Soft+Hackle+Streamers/
http://globalflyfisher.com/streamers/swaps/marabou/softhackle.htm
http://dicktalleur.com/proj9.pdf
http://www.magiclink.com/web/wesn/softhackl.htm