vintage tying materials?

[profilecad 0]

Hello,

I am needing to tie some vintage looking dressings for hooks on old lures. I fly fish as welll, and tie my stuff, but for these I'm needing something besides bucktail and standard saddle hackles. I've tried gadwall flank, and works ok, but I'm looking for real old school look. are they soem kind of turkley feathers? I just do noit know and cant see mto figure it out.

attaching an image that has a perfect example of a hook dressing I would llike to tie.

[JSzymczyk 0]

they look like just ratty old chicken feathers to me. Possibly bleached / dyed turkey flats. The feathers on that lure appear to have been trimmed, and also have some insect damage.

[mvendon 0]

Hi profilecad,

 

I'm assuming that you want to replace or re-create the feathers on that lure? If that's the case, you can try Goose Shoulder feathers in orange and white. They are more thin than turkey and would look very close to what's on that lure once tied in. A bunch of places sell them online. They're not available at every fly tying shop, but many have them.

 

Regards,

Mark

[Bugsy 0]

Yep, goose shoulder was my first thought. Even if the feathers in that old lure were something other than, goose shoulder would be very close.

[Piker20 0]

I like the design of the weed free hooks. I haven't come across those before.

[Gene L 0]

Looks like dyed chicken feathers to me. And that plug looks like a Devil's Horse with a tail.

[tidewaterfly 0]

You can check this site. http://www.antiquelures.com/index.html

Lots of old lures listed. I looked thru some of them, but didn't see any with that type of weedless hook or dressed rear treble.

 

There were a lot of smaller companies back then that made similar lures, so possibly it's none of the more popular brands.

 

You might also do an image search for "Henshall era flies", "Henshall era lures" or "Ray Bergman flies". This will give you some ideas about various feather combinations that were used in the early 1900's.

 

I agree with what the others are saying about that dressing looking like chicken feathers, possibly rooster body hackle or could be a domestic type duck body hackle. Hard to really say what it might be.

[mikechell 0]

Gene ... the Devil's Horse is blunt ended, only slightly more taper than a straight cylinder.

[flytire 0]

calf tail might work if you cant find the correct feather

[profilecad 0]

thanks for the suggestions. the lure is a 100 year old Hibbard Spencer minnow with Bings weedless hooks. its a super tough lure to find. I'm not tying hooks for it I just need to make some similar dressed ones for other things.

[Blackwater Virgil 0]

Is that old lure a Nip-i-diddee?

[Gene L 0]

If you look inside a feather pillow, you'll find many feathers like that, except they're white.

 

I doubt a production plug maker would get exotic, like duck feathers. No need to.