SOME MORE FLY DRESSING 129 



THE PURPOSES OF A HACKLE. 



The books on trout-fly dressing are to blame for the 

 prevalent opinion that the purpose of a hackle is to repre- 

 sent legs of a fly. It would be wrong to say that that is 

 never a purpose of a hackle, but it is wrong — " the wrongest 

 kind of wrong " — to represent it as the sole purpose or as 

 invariably one purpose of a hackle. 



In some of the old books one finds instructions for 

 dressings of winged flies with no hackle, but anyone who 

 tried any such pattern nowadays with moderately shy 

 trout would find them apt to be scared by the violence of 

 the fall of the fly on the water. The first function, then, 

 •of a hackle is to break the fly's fall, to let it down lightly 

 on the water. And that is equally true whether it be a 

 cock's hackle, or a hen's, or a soft hackle from any of the 

 small birds. 



When the fly reaches the water, another function, or 

 other functions of the hackle, comes or come into play. 

 If the fly be a floater, winged and hackled at the shoulder 

 only, then the functions are, first, flotation, and, secondly 

 (and often in a very secondary degree), imitation of the 

 legs of the fly. Many good fly dressers hold that the body 

 is the really attractive part of a trout fly, and that in a 

 floater a hackle which is sufficient to ensure adequate 

 flotation, and is otherwise colourless and inconspicuous, 

 serves its purpose best. A good cock's hackle, such as is 

 used for floating flies, is extremely sharp and bright when 

 held up to the light, and even in the ruddy shades lets but 

 little colour through. There can, however, be no harm, 

 and it is probably safer, if the hackle, as held to the light, 

 bears a fairly close resemblance in colour to the legs of the 

 fly which its pattern represents. 



A winged floater, hackled all down the body with cock's 



17 



