Swapping Guinea for Jungle Cock??

[Aqueous1025 0]

I am not quite there yet, but I bought some Guinea to use instead of Jungle Cock as sugested by Skip in his book for the Black Ghost. Jungle Cock is way expensive from the only places I saw it for sale and the immitations were always rated not very good. So I understand that you are supposed to cut it out of a Guinea feather but was wondering if anyone could elaborate on this and maybe show me a couple of pictures as to how one goes about doing this. I would appreciate this very much and any info on obtaining Jungle Cock that is not so expensive or immitations that work really good might be helpful as well.

 

Thank you

[flytire 0]

you have to find a guinea feather that would have a white spot centered on the feather stem. from there you strip back the fibers on either side of the white spot leaving some of the black fibers on each side. with a pair of scissors, cut the remaining tip of the feather in a rounded shape.

[mybadhabit 0]

You can find JC on ebay for around $45 a cape or less for lower quality ones.

[Bugsy 0]

See: How to Turn a Partridge Feather into a Jungle Cock Eye

Ray posted these instructions for making your own imitation JC several years ago. He's a talented tyer and generous contributor. If you have partridge or similar game feathers, you could give this a try. It's the finest substitute I've seen and more than adequate for the task.

 

Here is the result on two flies he submitted here:

 

[flytire 0]

dont forget starling feathers. they will work in a pinch!

[Aqueous1025 0]

Thank you guys so much

 

I will look into making some, I might even try out using my airbrush and paint booth for modelling stuff. That is a really cool idea, I downloaded the article for future reference. I wouldn't have even thought of doing that until I read that article.

[perchjerker 0]

If you can find the 'cape' from a male Mearn's Quail, aka "Fool's Quail", you will have many small black feathers with a large white spot on them, and occasionally a smaller one lower on the feather. A 136-M Pantone pen works quite well for painting the white spot to mimic the natural yellow of the 'nail'. The feathers are small, in the range of normal JC.

[Flytyer14 0]

dont forget starling feathers. they will work in a pinch!

 

 

I tie classic salmon flies and I'll second that! Starling feathers also look pretty neat too.