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Could someone please show a store hackle compared to a home grown hacle

 

 

Can you find someone in your area that has a rooster? See if you can actually go look at the feathers and you will see for yourself how usable the hackle will be.

Im sorry I have chickens and roosters. I should have specified. When I meant home grown I meant ones thats been bred for 25 to 40 years. Im sorry for the confusion

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What happens to all the other feathers that aren't cape or saddle? Looks like there's a ton of great feather all over those birds.

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What happens to all the other feathers that aren't cape or saddle? Looks like there's a ton of great feather all over those birds.

 

 

Mike,

 

I think it is basically economics. It would take as much time and effort to prepare the rest of the skin as it would the cape and saddle. But they could not charge as much for that part of the pelt.

 

As flytire said, Whiting does pluck the grizzly schlappen and dye it for sale in bundles.

 

Whiting%20Farms%20Grizzly%20Schlappen.jp

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I know a guy who you do not want to get stuck talking to at a party. He is also some kind of DNA scientist. If you want bald mice he removes the hair DNA from mice and then they breed bald mice. If you want a duck with no wings same thing. I would imagine you can do the same with chickens. I do not think you need to spend a hundred years selectively breeding chickens anymore. I imagine with the right amount of money you can be up and running in a couple years and turning out quality feathers before the decade is out.

 

I get sticker shock over most things, hackle included. Fortunately I do not fish or tie many dry flys. Last time I bought quality feathers it was a whiting variety pack containing 3 different color half capes that I got on sale from orvis for around 65 bucks. They will last me years since I only tie flies as I need them.

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Regardless of what your friend has told you, Poopdeck ... gene manipulation isn't something you just "do". It takes many generations and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to make significant modifications. It's done on a commercial scale to crops, because the industry can afford to "add" drought resistance (for example).

 

While I am no genetic engineer, I truly doubt you can just "delete the wings" off a duck. Genetic mapping is not quite that accurate, yet.

While it might BE possible to genetically modify hackle producing chickens ... a saddle from one (when they finally get a viable strain) would probably set you back several grand.

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Biologist here. Mike's right. In addition for most characteristics, there isn't just a single operative gene somewhere in the DNA.... during the eons, genes have become replicated so that for most characteristics there is a thing called multiple alleles. For example you don't just have one single hair color gene (brown or red or blond)... you have a whole bunch of hair color genes, located on different chromosomes. That's why there are more different hair colors than just brown/red/blond. It is also the reason for all the variability that exists among different members of a population. Genetically engineering multiple alleles may not be doable.

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To be honest, about all I've ever used hackle feathers for is to tie behind the head of a popper, and I find that a 4 or 5 inch feather is more than satisfactory for that purpose. I've always wondered, but never asked, why would anyone need those foot-long feathers? To tie more than one fly with the same feather? Maybe need a little longer one to palmer a large 1.0 or 2.0 long shank hook maybe? Whatzup with long hackles? Why so important?

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Absolutely more flies. It has been my experience that longer feathers, rather than having an elongated taper, instead tend to have the same amount of tip taper and base taper as a comparable shorter feather, and that the middle is nearly completely even, which makes for ideal dry fly hackle.

 

If you figure the average 5-7" saddle feather might tie 2 flies, and by extension, a half saddle might have 100+ feathers...so 200 flies in the pelt...taking selective breeding and applying it to your roosters to breed for 10-12" feathers might allow for as many as 5-7 flies per feather, which extended out on the same half saddle is 500-700 flies. So you're getting at minimum, more than double the flies from the same pelt, and possibly close to 4x more.

 

The thing I love about saddles...the *right* saddles, anyway, is that every feather on the pelt is usually within a range of 3 hook sizes. So for example, I just bought a barred ginger saddle last weekend that will tie primarily 18s. That means that 85-80% of the feathers are going to be 18's with the difference split roughly evenly between 16s and 20s. This is really great for dries because typically, the vast majority of the flies you want to tie with a given hackle will be of a fairly narrow range. On a neck that I have, I've all but used up all the #14 feathers on it, and only rarely ever use any dry hackle in that color (med. brown) in #12 or larger. When going smaller, I have a saddle that will tie #16-18 in the same color, and to compare the two feathers, the stem of the neck hackles is far stiffer and thicker than the saddle, meaning those feathers never get used. So I've got a brown dry neck that I paid full MSRP for, used maybe 10-15% of its feathers, and now its utility is all but gone for me. In contrast, the brown saddle I got may not address my needs in the #14 range, but in #16 and #18, where almost all of my caddis hackling needs reside, I will get 90%+ usage from that pelt.

 

Of course there's also the fact that I may use 2 neck hackles per fly, whereas with a similarly sized (hook size, that is) saddle hackle, I will get 3 flies minimum, and sometimes as many as 6 or more flies.

 

For someone who only uses rooster hackle for warmwater and tailing applications, there's nothing special about hackle. Almost any will do, and for the colors that are used in dry fly applications, your best bet may be to offer to buy "used up" necks from trout guys, which will have great, wide feathers leftover for poppers and streamer tails and collars.

 

For the trout guys, though, it's a subject to agonize over...capes vs saddles, various color schemes, sizing, etc...

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Whatzup with long hackles? Why so important?

This is a picture off the internet ... of a 10 inch long pike streamer.

This is one of the places I can think of, where a 5 inch long feather won't do.

 

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To be honest, about all I've ever used hackle feathers for is to tie behind the head of a popper, and I find that a 4 or 5 inch feather is more than satisfactory for that purpose. I've always wondered, but never asked, why would anyone need those foot-long feathers? To tie more than one fly with the same feather? Maybe need a little longer one to palmer a large 1.0 or 2.0 long shank hook maybe? Whatzup with long hackles? Why so important?

 

A hackle tapers and gets shorter toward the tip.

 

So if you are tying dry flies with a palmered hackle, a short feather will result in the hackle getting shorter and shorter as you wrap towards the tip. With super long saddle hackle, you can easily tie multiple flies with a single hackle. So the reason for long hackle is more flies from the same feather and more consistent hackle fiber length. This cuts down on sorting through hackles for the correct hackle length and I can wind the hackle with my fingers instead of using a hackle plier.

 

That is why Whiting can sell a few saddle hackles as Whiting 100 packs because they will tie 100 flies.

 

whitings_100s.jpg

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The "hackles" on that fly are emu or ostrich, though, and (assuming the fly's OAL is indeed 10") the actual hackle I can see are the standard 5-7" imported rooster neck variety.

 

That being said, it's absolutely true that people are using the longer saddles for things other than dries. Generally the streamers use wider, webbier grizzly saddles or schlappen, either natural or in a variety of dyed colors.

 

So yeah, long streamers are one non-dry area where they're being used...but the fly pictured isn't actually using them.

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