216 
FOREST AND S T R E A M 
April, 1918 
HOW TO MAKE THE ANGLER’S BEST FLIES 
THE FINAL ARTICLE OF THIS SERIES TREATS OF THE WET FLY, DIFFERENT METHODS 
OF TYING HACKLES, AND A SIMPLE METHOD OF MAKING DETACHED BODIES 
T HE wings of a standard wet fly are 
made of a single pair of feathers or 
strips; they are dressed flat—lie close 
to the body of fly; and usually they are 
not spread, or flared out from the body, 
but are set with their concave surfaces 
together. Or a single-feather wing may 
be used with the concave surface looking 
toward the back of the hook. (A spread 
flat-winged fly is an innovation of one 
British tackle-house that claims it may be 
floated if desired.) 
A wet fly may sometimes be put together 
by tying body and hackle before setting 
the wings, and by making reversed, or 
turned-back, wings. Thus you would start 
it as shown in Fig. I, catching in the tail 
and body material. 
Then you would lay the butt end of your 
wing-feather or feathers on the back of 
the hook and wind over this (which thus 
serves as body padding) with the body ma¬ 
terial. The wing-feather (or feathers) 
would now lie with tip directed away from 
hook and with concave surface looking up, 
the work appearing as in Fig. 2. (If two 
feathers are used, the concave surfaces 
Figure 3 
would look outward and a little upward. 
Next you can start the hackle as illus¬ 
trated by Fig. 3, catching it in by the tip. 
By GEORGE PARKER HOLDEN, M. D. 
In winding the hackle you will smooth 
the fibers back toward the bend of the 
hook after each turn, and you will remem¬ 
ber that you wind away from you and that 
the convex and brighter side of hackle 
must always face toward the hook’s eye. 
Make the last turns, at the shoulders, more 
bushy than the rest. After the legs are 
completed the result will be like Fig. 4. 
Figure 5 
It but remains to turn back your wing 
or wings into place, to hold the same there 
by a few half-hitches, and to apply the 
finishing touches (Fig. 5). 
The palmer style of hackle is best fast¬ 
ened first by its tip at the tail-end of the 
body and is then wound spirally—generally 
over the body—toward the head. A second 
hackle is often used to make more com¬ 
pact shoulders—the shoulder being the part 
of the fly just behind the head, where a 
shoulder belongs. Some bass and salmon 
flies, especially, are made with compound 
wings, auxiliary wings of a contrasting 
color, and of about half the length of the 
ordinary wings, being set outside them; 
these are called wing-shoulders. When 
part of the wing is made of a front, or 
upper strip (generally about one-third the 
width of entire wing) of one color ex¬ 
tending its full length, and the posterior, 
or under, part is of contrasting feather, the 
first is denominated simply the wing, or 
else the upper-wing, and the latter is 
termed the under-wing. 
H ACKLES are variously started at 
either end of the fly, by securing 
them first either by the point or 
butt, and two hackles may be caught in 
at once. Some “strip” the hackle, before 
tying, to make the fibers stand out at 
right angles to the quill; to do this, hold 
the feather by its tip, between the thumb 
and forefinger of one hand, and press¬ 
ing the quill firmly between the finger¬ 
nails of the same fingers (or thumb and 
middle-finger) of the other hand, draw 
down to the root. Other good tyers, as 
already noted, press back the fibers as they 
wind, to set them and prevent them from 
catching under subsequent turns. 
Some accentuate the head of the fly by 
making a little ball of herl—which is gen¬ 
erally of black ostrich but may be green or 
brown—at the front-end of the body; and 
some put a couple of turns of tinsel at the 
tail-ends of all bodies, believing that this 
slight glitter enhances the lure without de¬ 
stroying its identity. To the same end, Dr. 
Harry Gove puts a double band of silver 
and scarlet at the middle of the body. 
These procedures are logical enough, be¬ 
cause no matter what may be the colors of 
their backs, the under-bodies of all natural 
flies are very light and mostly of a silvery 
or golden sheen. 
In tying herl bodies, strip some herls 
from your green peacock or your ostrich 
feather, then catch two or three of them to¬ 
gether at the end with tying-thread; twist 
them together a little and then begin wind¬ 
ing all at once around shank of hook. 
Different ways of starting hackles 
When making silk bodies, untwist the two 
strands of floss, lay them together and wind 
smoothly and flat, without twisting. Use 
single strands or crewel wool, and do 
not wind too tightly or they will creak; 
loose winding also has the advantage of 
allowing the woolly hairs to start out more 
prominently, which helps buoyancy. The 
double wings, their parachute flare, and the 
hackle are the other main factors in flota¬ 
tion, the wings principally acting indirectly, 
by causing the fly to land lightly on the 
water; to this we add oiling and false 
casts, to keep the fly dry as possible. 
To make elongated, extended or de¬ 
tached bodies after the method of Mr. Mc¬ 
Clelland, previously noted, you first cut 
with a sharp thin-edged razor thin sheets, 
about an inch by half an inch in size, from 
a chunk of crude (pure unvulcanized) rub¬ 
ber. Have the razor wet. Then cut these 
sheets into very fine strips. Moisten a 
