Picture: Ed Dunens/Flickr
I’ve a love/hate relationship with fly tying. I benefit from the satisfaction of catching fish on flies I made myself, however I’m a decidedly common tier. It may possibly take me an hour or extra to tie up sufficient flies to final me a day (though that most likely says extra about my propensity to lose flies than it does my tying capability).
Both approach, I’m all the time intrigued with new tying strategies or supplies, which is why this story in Fly Fisherman Magazine caught my eye. Bob Quigley wrote about emu feathers, and the way most fly tiers overlook this useful resource.
Quigley was first launched to emu feathers by way of a Herters catalog when he was 12, but it surely wasn’t till he was in school that he noticed their actual potential. Whereas working at a zoo to pay his approach by way of faculty, a part of Quigley’s job was to wash cages at an aviary that housed three emus.
“As I gathered the emu feathers, I observed the feather barbs had an identical construction to tails and appendages on the completely different mayfly nymphs I had been collecting and tying,” Quigley writes.”The artistic gentle went on, and I began tying many nymphs with these feathers. The flies labored nice, and the feathers held up underneath rigorous fishing circumstances. I then began to horde, type, and accumulate baggage of those unimaginable feathers.”
Emu feathers aren’t simply nice for tying nymphs, both. Quigley says the versatile shafts of the hackle feathers make wrapping dry flies simple, they usually’re very best to be used in hackle stacker-style flies.
You possibly can learn the remainder of Quigley’s story here, however after perusing it myself, I’m off seeking emu feathers.
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