I just watched this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il8PieaI7GI - and he strips the hackle off one side of his dry fly hackle. I do this with wet fly hackle for many subsurface and emerger flies, but it would hurt my feelings doing it on dries and effectively doubling the cost of the already expensive dry fly hackle. However, it does make for a very clean and neat fly. Does anybody do this on your dry flies?
Joe
Joe,
No. Unless I’m adding foam to a dry, I look to use as much hackle (and floatant) as I can to help keep the fly on top of the water.
Regards,
Scott
Scott,
Agreed. But, I would think this fly he tied would be used in slow moving or still water and would be effective in those types of water and for finicky fish. Still, tearing off half the hackle barbs…ouch!
Joe
It’s sacrilege; it’s just, wrong (and for slow/flatwater situations, I’ll use parachutes, where no hackle is maimed or mis-treated in such fashion).
Regards,
Scott
If sparse hackle is the desired appearance, why not just use the India dry fly necks we had 30 years ago? Or the old Metz capes with a huge center stem? For those of us who struggled to make a densely hackled fly with those materials, it’s amusing to see someone destroy good materials to get the results we were trying to avoid.
Arnie
Nope…I prefer to tie it sparse (open the wraps) if less is desired, and clip the bottom if i want it riding lower. But we all have our on likes and preferences. No wrong answer really. 
Not me with what it costs.
While I disagreed with several things he did, the result was a very nice sparsely hackled fly. I was also surprised at the method of splitting the tails as again wasting hackle. I think that if he is tying commercially for his local market this may be a fast way to produce the pattern in quantity.
Competent but inefficient tier. Fewer turns of hackle generates a sparse fly. No need to waste dry fly hackle, but while the tie is technically odd, he does produce a decent fly. And agree with Rainbowchaser…his solution for the tail is just plain odd…
Perhaps if there wasn’t that annoying music track, he could have explained his reasoning.
Personally, if I want a sparse hackle, I just use fewer turns. But, there’s more than one way to wrap a hackle. My bigger objection is to stroking the fibers back on the stem. It can break down the structure at the base of the barbules and reduce the effective stiffness.
The split tail technique is in the Benchside Reference. Can’t remember off the top of my head who’s technique it is. Fullum? Talleur? Beatty?
Stripping the hackle was interesting as it makes sure that all barbs lay at right angles to the hook. Maybe he believes it makes it more likely that the fly lands properly?