Beaucatcher Fly Fishing

All of the American turkey species have feathers with a metallic copper color that shines in the water but with less brashness of silver or gold metal tinsels and synthetic flash. This seems to me to be a good way to provide a bit of flash for use during low clear water conditions for both steelhead and Atlantic salmon. Just as interesting upon playing with these turkey feathers a bit is that the short feathers located immediately in front of the large tail feathers on the turkey fan are the metallic copper feathers as illustrated above. The upper portion of the feather that is exposed on the bird has a traditional body feather structure with a copper metallic portion. But the lower portion of the feather that is hidden under other feathers on the bird has a barbules structure like fine ostrich herl with long flowing barbules that are not webby. Thus, one could use a single feather to produce both the spey hackle and the front hackle on a fly. The upper photograph is simply a bare hook with one of these feathers wrapped on the front 1/4 of the hook shank. This may produce a great front portion of either a traditional spider style pattern, an Alec Jackson Pseudo spey style pattern, or any other wingless or winged steelhead or Atlantic salmon pattern where you palmer the spey hackle the length of the body if you first split the feather. This can be done easily by soaking the feathers in warm water for about 15 to 30 minutes and then grasping opposites sides to the tip of the feather and pulling away and downward. You end up with two stem "skin" pieces with the feather fibers remaining on them intact and a center stem core. This can be seen in the photograph below.

Here are a few different feathers from a turkey pelt having the same metallic copper color and/or the spey hackle similar to what is used on the traditional Eagle Spey flies. You will note that the feathers on the left have stems fine enough to allow them to be used without splitting/stripping. Also by using only the top portion having the metallic copper color you can use the feather for a collar separate from the Spey hackle on the fly. Or you can use the Spey hackle only portion to tie in like an Eagle style Spey fly.

When the original concept fly in the first photograph above was placed in a fly swim tank the Spey fibers have excellent movement and they "stand proud" and don't collapse around the fly. This produces a fly profile with a large teardrop head and a very lively moving mid-section and tail. This is effect can be seen to a lesser extent in the photograph below using moving air instead of water for ease of photographing.

Below are two simple steelhead flies tied with the stripped turkey shown above. In the first the stripped feather is tied in by the butt at the rear of the fly body and wound forward behind the oval tinsel as in a traditional Spey fly. In the second the Stripped feather has been tied in and wrapped only at the head of the fly. As you can see you get a different look depending on how you mount the hackle.

I would be most interested in hearing from anyone that tries tying and fishing flies using these turkey feathers. Any observations and improvements would be most welcome.

© 2009 Bruce E Harang

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