tying wingless wet flies « currentseams.com

I get lots of questions about tying wet flies, and Jim B. recently sent me this one: Do you use hen saddle or hen cape feathers for your wet fly ties? My answer: hen cape feathers, primarily Whiting or Hebert Miner.

Then it occurred to me that some of you may be wondering, what’s the difference? For starters, capes and saddles come from different areas of the bird. The saddle is located on the lower back just in front of the tail. You’ll find the cape on the back of the neck. Both produce useful soft hackles with varied degrees of webbing. For me, the difference maker in favor of capes is their shape, and most importantly, the range of sizes of the feathers. For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to limit this discussion to the Whiting and Hebert Miner (not “Herbert”, as I often see them mistakenly called) genetic lines of wet fly hackle.

Whiting (left) and Hebert Miner genetic hen capes. The Hebert Miner cape is specifically marketed as “wet fly hackle,” and as you can see it’s a little longer than the standard Whiting cape. Like the Miner, the Whiting genetic packaging says “hen cape” at the bottom; that graphic is obscured by the feathers. Both capes come stapled to the thin cardboard sheet; if you remove the staple, do it carefully. Otherwise you’ll rip the skin patch if you try to pull the cape off the sheet. The Whiting cape is white dyed dark dun; this is the color I use for the Dark Hendrickson winged wet. The HM cape is a natural medium brown dun.

Capes give you the widest choice in feather size and colors. The feathers tend to be longer and narrower than saddles. But where capes really shine is that they give you feathers to tie bigger soft hackles (8 and larger) as well as the smaller ones you’d need for patterns like tiny BWOs and midges. (For one of my favorite tiny soft hackles, Smut Number 1, I use a Whiting cape for hackle; likewise with Pat Torrey’s Tiny BWO Soft Hackle.) That’s a huge range of sizes, and those tyers who value both extremes will be in hackle heaven. Even if you’re never going to tie size 6 steelhead or bass soft hackles, you can use the larger feathers for tailing material.

A tale of two feathers. Both of these hackles came from the same cape. Both have their uses. You can see that I’ve already begun taking some of the fibers from the larger feather for tailing material. Once removed from the patch, I keep these feathers in a ziplock baggie and store it in the back of the original packaging for easy access. Note that the larger feather has a generous amount of webbing; typically, the webbing becomes less prevalent as you work your way down the patch toward the smaller feathers. This is why I always recommend buying capes in person; you’ll want to rummage through the bags and find the capes with the webbiest feathers throughout. The smaller feather would make a fine hackle for a midge or a tiny BWO soft hackle.

I’m not going to get into the multitude of other hen soft hackle options that are available to you, like India Hen, Bantam Hen, Coq de Leon, and American Hen. I own several of these types of feather patches, both saddle and cape, and while they all have their uses, the vast majority of my wet fly tying with hen involves Whiting or Hebert Miner capes. It should also be mentioned that I primarily use genetic hen hackle for winged and wingless wets. (Most of the North Country Spiders I like to tie use game bird or starling hackle.)

It would be nice if money were no object, but the current going rate for these hen capes is about $30. Still, that represents a tremendous value since you’re getting hundreds of usable feathers. (I have some capes that are almost 20 years old and still have many flies left in them.) If I had to start with only three colors, I would choose, from left to right, light dun, brown, and light ginger. You can expand your collection as you get more into the wonderful world of soft-hackled flies.

If you’ve read James Leisenring’s book The Art of Tying The Wet Fly, you know that he was quite particular about hackle. (Cockerel, anyone? In case you didn’t know, cockerel is a young-of-year rooster.) He even suggests making friends with poultry farmers so you can pluck their birds, preferably in February or March. A fine pro tip, but certainly not as convenient as buying a patch of good genetic hackle. Fortunately for us, modern wet fly hackle is pretty darn good in terms of color options, feather size range, and availability.

One of Leisenring’s favorite wingless wets, the Brown or Red Hackle, tied with a furnace hen hackle. Interestingly, “furnace” isn’t what the package is labelled — it’s simply called “brown” — but this particular cape was a variant with many feathers that were close the classic furnace pattern, which Leisenring describes as a dark list near the stem and on the tips of the fibers, with a lighter color in between. Grab one if you see it, or I will!

Many thanks for the enthusiastic group of students who attended yesterday’s virtual fly tying class. We tackled the subject of winged and wingless wets (both how to tie and how to fish, although the focus was largely on the tying part). I appreciate your passion and energy, and I’ve received some excellent questions via email. Next tying class is TBD, both date and subject, although we discussed topics like streamers, proven local nymphs, and some saltwater/flatwings, too. Of course, I’d love to hear from you, since you’re the customer. Tie on, and dream about those sharp tugs that are coming this April.