A friend of mine brought me the whole tail feather from a Turkey he shot this weekend. So I’m looking for suggestions for flies that I could make out of it. It is a very nice clump, brown and mottled in color and the feathers very from webby like Schlappen to almost pheasant tail like. Pictures of examples would be awsome.
Thanks
Greg
First DON’T STORE IT WITH YOUR OTHER FEATHERS! Put in in a gallon zip lock with some borax to dry it out, then buy a dog flea color and put in the zip lock to kill any critters, then after a it is all dried and debugged you can use it to tie flies.
Do you need my mailing address
I have turkey tail, makes a good pheasant tail substitute.
Greg,
Go to Hans’ site ( http://www.danica.com/flytier/ ), click on the “Search Fly Tiers Page” and type in Turker Tail Feathers, then click on “Find”. It will list a large number of patterns with photo’s and recipes for flies using Turkey Tail Feathers (or any material you type into the seach engine)
I tried it and got more than 3 pages of patterns.
REE
Here is one with picture, a 150 year old
salmon fly. Well! you dtd ask. LOL
No 5 Brown Turkey with Black Hackle
Thread - Black
Tail - GP ToppingButt - Yellow mohair
Rib - Gold tinsel
Body - Dark Mauve pig’s wool
Shoulder - Dark red mohair
Hackle - Black hackle alt. Red Hackle,
palmered down body.
Wing - Dark brown feather with white tip.
Clay
How do I use the Borax?
Greg
There is quite a bit of meat and fat at the base of birds’ tails. Remove as much of that as you can without cutting off the ends of the feathers. Rub borax into the skin and all over the base of the tail. Then I like to put them in the microwave for about 15 seconds. That will kill virtually all bugs quickly and easily, including eggs.
Spread the fan out on a piece of cardboard or plywood and pin it out. That guarantees it will be the most annoying part of your tying stuff to store! But if you leave it collapsed the feathers will not be usable unless you cut them off.
A better way might be to pair the big feathers up with the feather in the same place, opposite side, and attach them with piece of stout string. When making wings for muddlers, hoppers, parts of married wings in salmon flies and such the pairs will produce far more uniform pieces to work with.
The second row of feathers is finer and extremely good for tent wing caddis and wet fly wings. It also makes more workable stuff for stone fly nymph wing cases than the primaries. There should even be some maribou hanging out there on the underside of the tail.
Do not put wet feathers in plastic because they will rot and that would be a shame… Store dried skins in plastic with a piece of flea collar.
art
Hap, thanks for the addition of not adding wet skins to plastic bags. Good tip, they mold.
This book has been on my wish list for a long time, I have to quit talking about buy it and just buy it. http://www.amazon.com/Field-Fly-Tiers-Skinning-Preserving/dp/1571882057/ref=sr_1_1/190-0890120-9319829?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241094902&sr=1-1
Turkey season for me is less than a month away and I would like to make use of more than just the tail. Turkey maribou is some sweet stuff and makes one of my favorite flies, a gray leech: http://www.tightlinesflyshop.com/?s=grey+leech
The biots on the turkey wings make some nice boies and wing casers also.
I use the body feathers to tie some small midge patterns.
Rick
Borders does free ship to store, if there is a store near you…same price for new, as well.
The original wings on thorax dries are made from flats, the square-ended body feathers. The flats make great posts for parachutes on dark patterns like mosquitos.
Last year a member gave the Alaska Fly Fishers a huge bag of turkey skins with tails, wings and the the works. I spent close to a week just washing, fleshing, boraxing, drying and fluffing them up. I got a bunch of stuff out of them that the club sold at our auction last year, and also use in our tying classes.
To encourage bidding I went on a hunt for patterns to tie with turkey and filled a box with a wide range of stuff from extremely simple nymph patterns to complex salmon flies.
Commercial Maribou today is from turkeys… The storks objected to being plucked I guess…
art
Tie your favorite pheasant tail pattern (PT, FBPT, BHFBPT, HSBHFBPT, PTP, PTF, etc) with turkey instead. You will like the ribbing effect. Make sure to use fine wire to hold it to the hook, it’s not very durable to fish teeth.