Introduction – Why fish with soft hackles, and some reference books

Demostration - Partridge and Yellow – start simple

Materials - all about the feathers that make up the soft hackles

Materials - popular body materials

Demonstration – Purple and Snipe – taking hackle from a wing covert feather

Demonstration – Green and Partridge – adding a thorax

Demonstration – Bead head Pheasant Tail – bead headed soft hackles

Demonstration – Starling and Herl – my go to fly

In the Green and Partridge demo, you saw hares mask applied with the direct dub method.  Another method is to use a dubbing brush. A dubbing brush is dubbing that is capture by thin wire and spun. This creates a pipe-cleaner like “brush” of dubbing. The fun way to create a dubbing brush is with a spinning block.

Here is a demo of a spinning block, courtesy of Jansiman on YouTube:

The starling feathers are usually small, and work well on flies size 14 and smaller. Other feathers may be substituted like partridge, hen, and quail.

Peacock herl is fragile, this demo shows adding a wire rib to reinforce the herl, so you can catch a few fish on the same fly.

The previous fly, a yellow and partridge, has a benefit of being a very simple and easy fly to tie. Adding a rib to your soft hackles adds durability, a little weight, and some flash.

Also, adding a thorax to soft hackles gives the hackle a backing, which keeps the hackles flowing a bit more while swinging your fly. Without the thorax, the hackles sweep tighter to the body of the fly.  The thorax also gives an opportunity for adding different colors and materials.

You may see packages of loose soft hackles in the fly shop. Avoid these.  These packages are the left overs after the best feathers have been used. The package may seem to be a bargin, but in the long run Its better to purchase the full skin, you get the best feathers and the skin itself stores the feathers sorted by size and color.

These packages are useful for providing legs on nymphs, and the very casual soft hackle tier.

Buy the skin.

Partridge is my favorite, each skin has tons of feathers, which are also useful for caddis dry fly wings (spent partridge pattern, for example).

Starling is another popular bird for creating soft hackles. The starling feathers are small, dark, and iridescent.  Very useful for tying down to size 20.

From the bottom, Hen backs are available and these are relatively inexpensive. They are available in a few colors and useful to tie larger sizes of soft hackle patterns (size 14 and larger, from my experience)

The top-most wing is a coot substitute. Several of the classic patterns call for coot feathers.

The wing in the middle is snipe substitute. The purple and snipe is a classic pattern.

Its not legal to sell coot and snipe skins, so the fly shops sell substitutes, bird parts that are similar, but legal.

Quail (on the left), and Ruffled Grouse are two other birds that are used. Pheasant call also be used.

These can be used instead of partridge, if you don’t have a partridge skin.

Sources

I like to always check my local fly shop first before ordering online. Its usually the same price. You can touch and feel the material. Compare several skins and choose the one that looks best to you, look at coloration and for tears and flaws in the skin (many of these are hunted, so shotguns and dogs are part of the processing).

Your local fly shop is an outstanding resource for tying materials, information, and supporters for fly fishing in your area. Give them business if you can.

My local fly shop, though, doesn’t stock many soft hackle materials, so I also shop online.  Most of the online fly tying merchants carry the most popular materials (hen backs, partridge, and maybe starling skins). Here are a few web sites that specialize in soft hackles these materials:

• Blue Ribbon Flies
• Great Feathers
• Jim’s Fly Company

If you have a favorite supplier, please leave a comment. I’ll update this list (and give them a little business).

If you don’t have silk thread, use regular thread.  I like Ultra Thread, but any thread will do. This is when you want to use your thicker thread, like 6/0 or 3/0 (or 140 denier).  You can use the smaller thread, but be prepared for lots of winding.

Other colors work well also. Try green, orange, brown, olive, chartruese.

Get tying.

Why soft hackles?

Soft hackle flies are becoming more and more popular. Why? Well, they catch fish of course. Also, they are quick and easy to tie, and very versatile flies to fish.

I fish them with a traditional soft hackle swing, as a dropper off a bead head nymph, dead drift like a nymph, and treat with floatant and fish right in the film. Tie your traditional nymph patterns, like pheasant tail, hares ear, or prince nymph, and add a soft hackle collar. You now have a fly that can be used either way.

Soft hackles are quick and easy to tie. Most have 3 or 4 materials to worry about, and take less than 5 minutes to tie. That is a dozen in an hour. You can find soft hackle patterns with just about any type of body material, many with just thread bodies. It doesn’t get any easier than that. Most patterns are tail-less, although you can add a tail. A body, rib, thorax, and hackle covers the majority of patterns.

Last summer, I introduced my wife and kids to soft hackles. They love to fish them. My daughters like them, because they catch fish. Once we find a pod, catching fish is much easier with soft hackles than standard drys or nymphs. Fewer arguments, also, because daddy is spending less time “correcting” his daughters and telling them to set…

My wife loves to fish soft hackles, the swing can be accomplished while taking a sip of wine.

Did I mention they catch fish?

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be showing the materials used to tie soft hackle flies, plus a series of videos that demonstrate the techniques.

For those that would like a deeper dive, here are a few references that I’ve found useful.