Bucktail streamers

[troutchaser30]

I started tying my brook trout flies for the upcoming season and am thinking about substituting synthetic craft hair for bucktail on some of my streamers.

Have any of you guys ever used the stuff and do you find it effective when gunning for brookies?

Thanks.

JC

[Hugh]

I use some synthetics but being a traditional sorta tyer not much,mainly Flashabou,and Crystal Flash sparingly,I find that synthetic bucktail has no life to it and after beong tied in looks like the buisness end of a paint brush. Hugh

[troutchaser30]

Thanks, Hugh.

I was concerned that the synthetic hair wouldn't have as much action as the real deal.

[Deb dePeyster]

using cat whiskers in flies

I had a friend who tied his own flies and liked to use cat whiskers. These fall out naturally - you don't pull them out!
I still collect cat whiskers when I see them around the house; I have like 100. If anyone would like them, I'll mail them to you free.

[aaronlawson]

Synthetic bucktails

I'm generally a very traditional fly-tyer, but I was convinced last season that certain kinds of synthetic hair can out-perform bucktail under the right conditions, and I have started using it quite a bit.

I was fishing in the Black River after a big rain in Sept, using big black deep running flies and couldn't get a hit. I finally switched to an 'experimental' fly I had tied the night before for high water visibility. It was all fake: body of copper wire, wing of black over charteuse synth bucktail. This was synth bucktail designed for fly tying, and it wasn't cheap (I'm on the road so I can tell right now what the brand was).

To my surprise it looked more 'alive' in the water than the natural stuff, and fish really went after it. I probably had 15 fish hit it. My suspicion is the charteuse made it much more visible to the fish, and this charteuse was very fluorescent, which reflects a lot of light that is not in the human-visible part of the spectrum, but is (allegedly) in the trout-visible part.

I'm not about to start using Copper Johns or anything (they seem more like they should be in the 'Thomas Buoyant' family than a fly), but I really think synthetic bucktail has come to rival the natural stuff -and that was certainly not true 10 years ago, when it was like paint bristles!

[troutchaser30]

Thanks for the feedback. I am going to try craft hair or the unique hair sold by Orvis.

[clint]

Have you tried marabou? Many colors are available and it has great action.

[Qtip]

I agree with clint; marabou literally breathes in the water. Good stuff!

clint,

Fish Oaks Creek much? I live in Hartwick.

Qtip
Soli Deo Gloria!

[troutchaser30]

That's a good idea. I use the usual black, olive and brown marabou for my buggers, but haven't really experimented with the other colors.

A few years ago, I made a bunch of jigs for a friend and have a lot of orange, green, red, purple and chartreuse marabou left over that hopefully I can use on my trout streamers.

Thanks.

[clint]

I agree with clint; marabou literally breathes in the water. Good stuff!

clint,

Fish Oaks Creek much? I live in Hartwick.

Qtip
Soli Deo Gloria!

I have fished Oaks a bit. It is mostly a DEC stocked stream and tough stream on fish due to the shallow nature of Canadarago Lake and summer water temps in the 70's.