[FishyboY]

I am sort of confused on spinning deer hair and stacking deer hair for floating bass bugs??? would love it if someone could explain!

[smallieFanatic]

It is just two ways to flare deer hair. You are able to do more things with stacking however, like incorporating spots in the top of the fly and different color designs that you are unable to do with spinning. When stacking, you are actually flaring clumps of deer hair on top of each other; stacking if you will.
Someone else will can explain it better than me I'm sure. However, here is a video that might help you out if want to learn how:
http://www.hatches.tv/play.php?vid=155

[Pelhament]

I prefer to stack because I feel I get a tighter deer hair body, however spinning takes less time for me. So for the most part I spin my divers and stack my poppers, unless I am doing a diver with lots of colors or design.

[Hairstacker]

I decide whether to stack or spin based on personal preferences and circumstances. I wish I currently had a camera so I could take some pictures of some flies and illustrate but I don't, so I will make do with a couple of pictures I've taken in the past.

For my divers, I want the whole fly to be relatively tight and solid, and the only way to achieve that is by stacking multiple stacks of hair on top of one another. Here is a fly that was strictly stacked with no spun hair on it whatsoever:



For my poppers, I actually prefer the fly to be not all that solid and tight, so that it'll sit a little lower in the water surface and fish better; thus, I spin most of the body and head on my poppers. Here's a fly that I spun several years ago that has no stacked hair on it whatsoever (although nowadays I do make them just a little tighter by judiciously adding stacked hair in a few strategic areas):



As you can see by the above two examples, you can create vertical separations of color very effectively using either method; however, if you want to achieve horizontal separations of colors, like a fly with a white bottom and some other colors on top, for example, you can only achieve that by stacking. Also, if you want circles or spots on your fly, you can only achieve that by stacking as well.

As far as circumstances, let's say you've tied in a bunch of tail materials and you now have a big stub of materials at the tail tie-in point. It will be much easier to stack hair around that tail tie-in point than to spin hair on it and risk twirling the tail around. Even if you do manage to spin hair on it, the end result will look exactly the same, so why not choose stacking as the easier, less risky method? You can always choose to spin the rest of the fly and no one will know that the tail tie-in point was stacked.

Also, if you've spun hair all the way to the head of, say, a popper fly and decide you would like the head just a tad more solid, it is a simple task to just stack a bunch of hair on top of the spun hair to tighten it up.

So you see, it depends on what you're trying to achieve, and I would learn to do both well, so that you can employ each method as necessary to achieve desired end results or to solve particular problems. Anyway, hope this helps.

-- Mike

[Bruce Derington]

Hairstacker will steer you in the right direction, and has given great examples of each , have fun with the hair and show us the results

[FishyboY]

thanks for the reply hairstacker!

[deeky]

The only other item I will add - if you plan to thread rubber legs through the body after trimming, stack your hair. It will give you a denser, fuller underbody to get the legs fed through than spinning will accomplish.

Deeky