Wet fly wings

[pmjasper]

Just curious, are most wet fly wings created by using a wing burner? I've tried to cut wings before and never can get two exact matches that are clean looking. Just wondering how it's done. Thanks.

[alanb_ct]

No, I don't think they are ever done with a burner. Traditional wet fly wings are made from matched sections of a goose quill. The term matched means that you extract one piece from a left-facing quill, and one matched piece from a right-facing one (i.e. from the goose's wing on either side of the body).

I learned a good trick from A. K. Best. To make matched quill pairs, get a small square cross section of balsa wood. Push two sewing pins through the section, perpendicular to the long axis. Space the two pins the desired width of the quill. I believe you want the width of the wing to match the hook gap or to be a little smaller. A. K.'s book called "Production Fly Tying" covers this in detail.

[AaronJasper]

Good response Alain!
That's why so many wet flies don't look perfect. You have to go through many feathers in order to create the "perfect" wet fly wing. However, remember almost all the flies that we tie have some sort of imperfection and they still catch fish. Just make sure that the wings match up decently. Also, remember that once you catch a fish on the fly the wings look shabby anyway. The only tiers that need to have total perfection are the ones making the flies for displays or for framing.

[pmjasper]

Do the wings get treated with something like Fleximent before being tied into the fly?

[alanb_ct]

We may have covered this elsewhere in the forum (re: leadwing coachman). Never, ever treat the wings on a wet fly - it affects the way the wing breathes underwater. The wet fly wing is one place where higher quality materials will make your job easier. Ultimately, the fish won't care if you're off a little, but poor materials may cause an unbalanced (spinning) fly. You will know when you retrieve your line and find your tippet all twisted up! For this and related issues, Mr. Wotton is the standard bearer.

[pmjasper]

I'll look up some of the other posts about the coachman. My only concern with untreated wings was that they would quickly break.

[CM_Stewart]

1. They will break, or at least they will lose their perfect shape.
2. The fish won't care.
3. Take a look at Dave Hughes' book "Wet Flies." He ties most of his winged wets with hen hackle rather than with quill slips. Not only are they easier to tie, you eliminate the risk of the fly spinning like a propeller if the two wings are't perfectly matched. (Oh, yeah, and the fish don't care).

[pmjasper]

Thanks so much for the information. I really appreciate how helpful everyone on the site has been. can't wait to start the trout season and test a few on my creations. Thank again.

[Fontinalis]

Wet fly wings are made made from Duck or Goose paired (Right & Left) wing quills. Also like the Professor or Grizzly King, the wings are made from right and left paired flank feathers. The same holds true for barred Wood Duck. You never use a fixative or flex cement and so on to wings. Lastly the wings will get a little ruffed up from a few Trout. But if you want to keep them a little nicer looking after fishing, then use a steam kettle. The steam will rejuvinate the wing quills. I never do this because the fly after about 12 to 14 trout has seen it's time. Now on a tying note, I do use whistling tea kettle to get mangled wings back into shape and then take a steam iron on low setting and iron the remaining wrinkles out. Works great. Look at the wings on my Yellow Sally on my Avatar. Those wing were mangled when I bought them and look how good they look after being steamed and then steam ironed.

Fontinalis
AKA Andy B

P.S. I would like to say hello to everyone. I was sent an E-mail to look at this site and join. I like what I see and I see you already have a good chap like Davy to boot. Can't ask for more.

[Davyfly]

I would add here guys that many of the old UK wet flies have wings formed from tails feather sections such as Partridge and hen Pheasant, and also from wing sections taken from many other species of birds such as members of the crow family, waders such as plovers, song birds, and other species such as woodcock, snipe, moorhen, coot, starling, grouse and so on.

In most cases they are legal there, either as by product from legal hunting or as specimens obtained from legal sources, such as registered road kills, taxidermist auctions and so on.

By comparison feather slips taken from wildfowl such as duck and goose are way easier to work with than those l list here. For the reason that they do not handle well and allow for misplacement during the tying in procedure.

There are some tricks to the trade here so far as how you would prep wings formed from these birds, which may not be the typical left and right formed sections.
In some cases a hackle is folded to form the wing.

Davy.