Photo: Ed Dunens/Flickr
I have a love/hate relationship with fly tying. I enjoy the satisfaction of catching fish on flies I made myself, but I’m a decidedly average tier. It can take me an hour or more to tie up enough flies to last me a day (although that probably says more about my propensity to lose flies than it does my tying ability).
Either way, I’m always intrigued with new tying methods or materials, which is why this story in Fly Fisherman Magazine caught my eye. Bob Quigley wrote about emu feathers, and how most fly tiers overlook this resource.
Quigley was first introduced to emu feathers through a Herters catalog when he was 12, but it wasn’t until he was in college that he saw their real potential. While working at a zoo to pay his way through school, part of Quigley’s job was to clean cages at an aviary that housed three emus.
“As I gathered the emu feathers, I noticed the feather barbs had a similar structure to tails and appendages on the different mayfly nymphs I had been collecting and tying,” Quigley writes.”The creative light went on, and I started tying many nymphs with these feathers. The flies worked great, and the feathers held up under rigorous fishing conditions. I then started to horde, sort, and collect bags of these incredible feathers.”
Emu feathers aren’t just great for tying nymphs, either. Quigley says the flexible shafts of the hackle feathers make wrapping dry flies easy, and they’re ideal for use in hackle stacker-style flies.
You can read the rest of Quigley’s story here, but after perusing it myself, I’m off in search of emu feathers.
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