Trimming Hackle

[Alex C. 0]

OLB, the representation of hackel to leggs is the way it skitters in the water, by breaking up the surface. One easy way to see this is take a dry and drop it in the water in front of you, and jiggle your rod, and notice how it looks like a buggs leggs kickin the water, its almost exact.

 

No it's not Where have you seen a mayfly skittering across the water? Sure females will sometimes drop down repeatedly when egg laying, but most will just drift.

[fly time 0]

AAAHHH you have not observed them close enough, the water will ripple!!!

[Alex C. 0]

Are you talking about hose little "indents" in the surface film where their feet are resting?

 

 

[Alex C. 0]

One more thing,

 

Go catch a bug, a mayfly for example. Bring it home and put it in a glass of water with a standard dry fly. You'll see the hackle looks nothing like legs, fortunately for us fisheman, most fish don't care

[newfie 0]

from what ive studied on the water, in books, online and my own personal experience the hackle dosen't represent legs. it merly gives th efly flotation and somewhat of a specific shadow on the water

[Steeldrifter 0]

Hackle serves a couple different purposes. Most importantly it is what makes a dry fly float, and above all other purposes it serves to me thats the main one. It also adds that all important silhouette to the dry fly that makes it look like a bug from the fishes focal point. What it adds to the fly is "bulk" up front near the head of the fly. If you didnt have that bulk up front then it would not look like an real bug, it would just look more like a uniform diameter piece of debris floating on the surface. That "bulk" that it adds can be viewed as a number of things......ethier wings, wings that are in motion, or yes even legs.....remember unlike a realistic a hackled dry fly is just a general representation of a mayfly so parts of it are tied as such. So hackle does not represent just one part of the mayfly as has been suggested, but rather it represents many parts of the mayfly.

 

Far as the movemnet of water when a mayfly is on the surface- that would depend which stage of a hatch you are fishing. If your simply talking about the begining of a hatch when the mayflys are actually coming out of their shucks and sitting on the surface, then Alex would be correct because the duns will simply float with the current without much movment while their wings dry. Now if your talking about a spinner fall though then thats a different story. After spinners have mated and fallen back to the surface to die then they will create a small vibrating movement of the water around them. Usually you wont notice this with just the naked eye but anyone that has found themselves in the middle of a hex spinnerfall where the bugs are numerous and huge can atest to the quivering water a dieing hex will give off. So on that point you both could be right, just depends on which stage of a hatch your talking about.

 

 

Steve

[Alex C. 0]

here are some photos of mayflies from underwater

 

duns

 

 

 

spinners

 

 

 

theres a ton more of photos of insects from underwater at

 

http://www.geocities.jp/suimenuka/kapyupa.htm

 

click on the right question marks at the bottom to scroll through the pages

[steelie 0]

Good Day,

 

OLB, that is some site isn't it? I have been using it as research rescource for some time now. The pics are truly amazing and very educational.

 

Steelie

[Linesides 0]

Everyone loves a well trimmed hackle

[redkid 0]

redkid -

 

I can't read French, but got the point on the 'hackle'. What is the body material on that fly? It looks like severely trimmed hackle. Is that right? Never seen it before.

 

I can't read French either but that site has a lot of great flies so.. I't some kind of herl, biot, I dont realy know.He uses diferent kinds of feathers

 

Look at:

- http://ns33014.ovh.net/~dessaign/biendebut...l/corpsherl.htm

- http://ns33014.ovh.net/~dessaign/Lesmouche.../sedgepoils.htm

- http://ns33014.ovh.net/~dessaign/Lesemerge...lafee/lafee.htm

 

Actualy, most of the dry flies have that kind of body..

 

Later,

Mihai

[newfie 0]

looks like turkey biots

 

[ashbourn 0]

Whiting Farms sells White dyed yellow dry fly rooster capes.

 

Joe Fox

[nemoblackdog 0]

Looking at the photos from the Japanese site, two things pop to mind:

 

1) The vast majority of common fly patterns are not very good matches for the natural - they are almost all more impressionistic than not. Of course, this is from the perspective of human perception, we cannot even begin to guess what a fish really perceives - is it just basically size, color and position in the water? Or do they really see all the details of the legs, tranlucency of the wings, etc?

 

2) It's amazing how many views show a well lit view of the whole fly - many details of the legs, wings and body are clearly visible. Often times it's much more than a silhouette. Real legs look nothing at all like fuzzy dubbing or hackle.

 

Given the above, I think the fact that we catch as many fish as we do using pretty poor facimiles means fish just are not that discerning - especially for dry fly patterns.

 

[dontheo 0]

When tying, tie it right so it looks good. Then, on the stream when you get down to the fishing part. Carry a pair of scissors with you and trim it to fit any way you like to modify it for the situation. At this point it's about catching fish and if you do, it going to look like crap anyway after a few fish slime the hell out of it.

 

I have one of those bandage tape scissors with the round end cause I alsways seem to fall at one time or another. I saw were A.K. carried an old tying pair but that scares me. With my luck I'll end up with it sticking in me somewhere.