Wet Fly Ways.. The flies.

Hi Davy,
I've got two questions. First, you mentioned using rooster. Leisenring used various hackle stiffnesses depending upon the water speed he was fishing, using cockerel hackle on some of his flies. Do you consider this good practice?

Second, do you think hook wire weight has a noticeable impact on the sink rate of flies?

Thanks,
Mark

Mark,

yes l certainly agree that rooster hackle has its place, no doubt of that.
Historically the train if thought was that flies used for lake fishing supported rooster hackles and those used for rivers and streams used soft hackles, all be it there are many flies of the 1800s that were fished both for lakes and moving water systems that used rooster.

Now also consider this Mark. At that time there was no such thing as genetically raised birds.
In many cases prime rooster hackle was obtained from birds raised for cock fighting, old English game birds.
Many of the breeds we see to day did not exist back then.
In fact one of my uncles friends did just that raised birds for fighting and feather for tying, as a rule the birds that were of no use in the ring were those used for the feathers, or those that were killed.

Take some of these classic patterns as a example. The Butchers, Dunkeld, Peter Ross, Alexandra, Mallard and Teal series, which were primarily lake flies, all used rooster hackle.

Many of the wet flies used in Spain and France used CDleon hackles which is a very stiff vibrant feather.

So yes, for sure l have a great use for rooster hackle depending on the fly l use it for, often as not for sunk spinners, egg laying baetis etc.

Hook weights. Again Mark l do consider this to be important, some may argue other wise, it is my experience that at times it will make a great difference for a number of reasons.

The first is the nature of the fly.
As l am sure you would know, if you wish to tie say a soft hackle with a sparse body a a few turns of delicate hackle then you would choose a fine wire hook, it would not be a good choice to use a heavy weight iron.
Such a fly would be fished in the upper levels of the water column.
Further more this hook would be obstrusive to the nature of this fly.

On the other hand l may well choose to use a heavy weight iron for large bodied fly patterns such as a Alexandra.

To answer your question , yes l do believe it can have a noticable effect depending on the nature of the materials used for that fly and further how it is fished, also more to the point the nature of the filament used, is it mono, FC, CP, and what is its diameter.

For the same fly will sink at different rates, by choice of filament used.

Davy

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