What to look for in Comparadun hair?

[dawgvet 0]

Starting to fish tailwaters more and want to tie some good comparaduns. I've read alot of advice that says get 'good' comparadun hair. I'm trying to find out what to look for in identifying good hair for comparaduns. What type of tips should it have? Fine diameter hair shafts? How much flare?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,

Jed

[Al Beatty 0]

Hi Jed,

 

The best deer hair for wings and tails is located on the animal in an eight-inch-wide strip along the back bone extending over the shoulder on one end and over the rump on the other. Often you don't get to select from a full hide so use the color of the hair to make your selection. Good wing hair has a fiber with a fine black tip followed by a short tan section followed with a section of dark gray followed by the base section of light gray hair. The light gray flares really bad while the dark gray doesn't. You want the dark gray for hair wings. Often the hair from the rib area on the animal looks similar but the dark gray section is too short or missing all together; most of it is light gray which flares too much. Good luck with you hair-wing flies and post some pix. Take care & ...

[Piker20 0]

Good advice, I am lucky and have access to skins and always try to take a patch from neck to bum with a foot of flank either side of spine. This provides the darker spine hair and the hollower flank hairs for spinning.

Another thing to look out for is a summer animal. The hair is less coarse and more of it makes better wings than the same beast in the winter.

[dawgvet 0]

Wow, thanks Al for the info. I didn't expect an answer from a fly-tying celebrity! Great to know some of the real gurus are on the board here!

Piker, I will definitely keep an eye out for summer skin.

[ausablemur 0]

Wow, thanks Al for the info. I didn't expect an answer from a fly-tying celebrity! Great to know some of the real gurus are on the board here!

Piker, I will definitely keep an eye out for summer skin.

 

Correct me anyone if I'm wrong but Caucci & Nastasi in Hatches recommend Coastal Deer Hair.

[riffleriversteelheadslayer 0]

mur the reason most use costal hair is because it usually comes from a warmer climate and thus is like the summer deer

[ausablemur 0]

mur the reason most use costal hair is because it usually comes from a warmer climate and thus is like the summer deer

 

Thanks Paul. I've been tying compara-duns since the book came out and didn't realize that.

[mvendon 0]

Hi dawgvet,

 

If you want to take some of the guess work out of it, Hareline Dubbin brand sells comparadun hair in natural and dyed dun. Lots of tying places carry that brand.

 

Regards,

Mark

[carlp5351 0]

IThe best deer hair I hav found is Natures Spirit, the stuff is awsome. The cleanest, the best tips and they tkae the guess work out of it for you.

 

http://www.worleybuggerflyco.com/naturesspiritt/ns_deer_hair.htm

 

carlp

[perchjerker 0]

Paul...

 

Where did you get this information from? The natural distribution range of the Blacktailed Deer (a mule deer; aka: "Coastal Deer") extends from just north of the LA area in California to quite some distance north into British Columbia; making this statement somewhat questionable. Granted, this area is not typically hit by "Arctic Blasts" like the regions of the US east of the Rockies; but it is not immune to some very cold weather; especially in the mountainous areas.

 

I suspect that it has more to do with the deer species than the climate where it lives. As I am sure you are aware, the whitetailed deer which yields the hair we use for spinning and stacking, among other applications, is an entirely different species, and is found primarily east of the Rockies.

 

Regards,

Frank

[riffleriversteelheadslayer 0]

Frank when I asked wapsi that same question that was the answer they gave me I'm sure it just like our hackles has something genetic involved but that was the easiest answer they could come up with

[SilverCreek 0]

I posted this on other BB's:

http://www.flyanglersonline.com/bb/showthread.php?42006-Interested-in-tying-Comparadun-Patterns-Good-Hair.


http://www.theflyfishingforum.com/forums/general-fly-tying-discussions/251936-selecting-deer-elk-hair-comparaduns.html


Please forgive me for this long post but seeing tyers use the wrong type of deer/elk hair for flies is one of my pet peeves.

The selection of deer or elk hair is critical. Here is a primer.

All deer and elk hair have a hollow body section and a solid tip section. The hair also undergoes a color change from darker to lighter to darker from bottom to top. Most of the time, the solid tips are of a darker color that are distal to the lighter section. For comparaduns, you want hair with short and even tips. By even tips, I mean the solid tips section of of equal lengths. When you stack hair with even tips, the color break from the lighter hollow section to the darker solid section will occur at the same place on all the hair and the wing of the comparadun will look even. If the tip sections are not of equal length, the hair may be of equal length when tied in, but the wing will look ragged because the color break point looks ragged.

Secondly, try to get hair which not only has even tips but even length. This is difficult to do, but when you do, the tips are even on the fur. With this type of hair, you can tie the flies without stacking because the tips will be lined up on the fur and the tips will be even when cut from the fur. When examining hair insert a piece of white paper behind the hair to examine the dark tips. I take a 3X5 card with me for this purpose.

Thirdly, the hair must be resilient, and flair evenly when compressed. Do not buy hair that will crack when compressed. You can check this by taking the hair out of the package and pinching the hair at the point you are going to tie it in. I pinch it between my index finger and my thumbnail. It should flair evenly and the hair should not break. Hair that is bleached or dyed can become brittle, so always check bleached or dyed hair for brittleness.

Finally, the best hair has minimal under fur. The less under fur, the less you need to remove before tying the the hair. This is a minor point but I mention it for completeness.

I never buy hair that I cannot examine. Hair should not generally be bought sight unseen unless the seller knows exactly what you want and will preselect it for you. In every fly shop that I visit, I look at their hair selection. Whenever I find an excellent piece of hair, I'll buy it because a lot of it is not very good.

For SMALL flies, it is CRITICAL to get hair with SHORT TIPS. If the tips are long, most or all of the hair you tie in will be solid and not hollow. Deer hair grows during fall and winter. You want hair from a deer that has been harvested early in the hunting season. This is called "early season hair."

Here are some photos of two patches of excellent comparadun hair.

This shows two patches of dark and light hair side by side. Although the hair may look long on this close up, it is actually about an inch from skin to tip.

This is a closer view of the dark hair for better contrast to see the even tips and the coloration changes. Notice that the hair shafts that are on the same relative "row" of the pelt line up so that the tips and lighter bands are even across the row.

 

 

Here is a close up of the tips taken with white paper to bring out the tips. Notice how you can now see the very short dark colored solid tips above the lighter banded section. The length of the hair is only about an inch so that the solid tips are very short although they may look longer on this macro photo. Notice how even the tips are across the white background. This is what you are looking for.


Now compare the hair above with the hair on the GFF comparadun. Look at the hair on the pelt and notice that the pale section of the hair is less even than on the pelt above. That means the tips lengths are more irregular. If you look at the stacked hair, you will notice that the dark tips are pretty even but that the hair in the pelt above is better and more even. Look at the finished fly and you will see some irregularity or fanning of the color change that makes the wing look a bit irregular even though all the hair is equal in length. The fly is well tied but it would look better if the hair tips and coloration were more consistent.

I buy my deer hair at Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone, Mt. The reason is that they have bins of hair, but there is considerable variation in the hair. Hair is like hackle. I want to feel and examine it myself. Since the price of a bad piece of hair is the same as an excellent piece of hair, why not buy the best?

You also need to know that comparadun hair is not good for elk hair caddis or for any "down wing" pattens. Hair that flairs gives you a high wing profile and when you see a caddis on the water, it has it's wings folded flat over it's back. So you want hair that does NOT flair as much.

Al Troth, when he first published his EHC, noted that it should be tied with hair that did not flair, but that fact has been lost on fly tiers. This type of hair is difficult to find especially for smaller patterns and now virtually every EHC now is tied with a prominent flared wing. Commercially tied flies tend to have high profile wings because that is the hair they have to tie the flies.

Larry Solomon and Eric Leiser's "The Caddis and the Angler" published in 1977 has the original elk hair caddis pattern on pg 200. You will notice that the hair on the pattern is tent like and does NOT flair much.

Al Troth's original EHC from "The Caddis and the Angler. Notice the flatter tent like wing profile like a natural caddis.

Here are are two EHC patterns tied close to the original. The first is closer to the original Al Troth pattern.



http://www.flyfishersrepublic.com/patterns/elk-hair-caddis/

http://www.charliesflyboxinc.com/flybox/print.cfm?parentID=44

Compare this with the hundreds of Elk Hair Caddis images on the web.

If you only have hair that flairs and want a flatter wing profile, bend the front 1/3 of the hook shank up as in Gary Borger's Poly Caddis. You tie the hair in on this bent section of hook and it will lower the wing profile.


I label the hide side of my hair with the pattern like "EHC", or "Comparadun, or "Stimulator", and the size of the pattern that the hair is for. For example, I have size 14-16 comparadun, and size 18-20 comparadun hair. Since the black tips must be very very short and even on size 18-20 comparadun hair and this hair is extremely rare, I never use my small fly comparadun hair for larger flies. It is simply too precious to waste.

I get to Blue Ribbon every time I go to Montana and I sort through the bins until I find the hair I want. Never use Comparadun hair for EHCs and vice versa and never use small fly deer/elk hair for larger flies.

I want to emphasize the importance of a white background when sorting hair. I said to carry a 3x5 card to use as a background. It also works for grading hackle. I simply write what I want to buy on the lined side of the card and use the plain blank side to sort hair. But if you have no 3x5 card, I use the white side of a business card for the background. I keep a plain business card in my wallet just for that purpose.

[perchjerker 0]

Paul...

 

Their answer translates to: "We don't know!" I figured as much. Thanks for your response.

 

FWIW, in spite of what so many authors have had to say about there being "no use" for Texas White Tailed deer in fly tying; I respectfully submit that they have very little or no knowledge of such hair. Granted, it is seldom, if ever, long enough for spinning or stacking; unless you are doing #8 or smaller Rat Faced McDougals, Muddler heads, etc.; BUT, it does make great hair for wings and tails on many patterns. I have used it for such things for over 40 years now. The marking (band) colors may not be identical to "coastal deer", but does that really matter to the fish?

 

Regards,

Frank

[phg 0]

"What we have here is a failure to communicate...."

 

What was used for comparadun wings was Gulf coast whitetail deer hair, often referred to as coastal deer hair, and what you get if you purchase a patch of "coastal deer hair" in a commercially prepared package from a fly shop. Unfortunately, it appears that people on the west coast refer to their deer as coastal deer too, but west coast mule deer won't work too well, although the more southern whitetails might. The key here is that gulf coast deer live in warmer climates, so they don't grow long, thick winter coats.

 

Interestingly, I was in a class taught by Charlie Craven this past weekend where he stressed using deer hock hair for smaller comparaduns. The hair on down the legs is shorter and more suitable for comparaduns, regardless of what region of the country the deer comes from. Nature's Spirit is supposed to carry this material, but I haven't looked for it yet.

[dawgvet 0]

SilverCreek,

Thank you for such a great reply. That is exactly the info that I was looking for. I would love to see a book or some literature on what hair from certain parts of deer bodies is best suited for. Also what are the diffecences in material when you see terms in catalogs like "cow body hair", "deer hock hair", "bull elk mane hair", etc. I would love to buy all my hair first-hand but my flyshops are limited on the hair they carry. I have called and talked to Blue Ribbon Flies so hopefully they are knowledgeable and can help.

Thanks Again,

Jed