Vicuña Dubbing
To me, tenkara anglers are an intrinsically “outside the box” breed. We don’t fish with reels, we reject the prevailing notion that more gear catches more fish, and lets’s face it, our flies look…well…strange. Even stranger are the materials we experiment with. I’ve seen tenkara flies tied with everything from snakeskin to fuzz from a fern (and even junk just laying around the house). I think it’s fair to say that I’ve seen far more unconventional materials used in tenkara flies than in mainstream fly fishing (which tends to stick to what’s hanging on the fly shop pegboard).
At the 2014 Tenkara Summit, Chris Kline from Tenkara Hero was nice enough to bring me a small kit in an Altoids tin containing some parrot feathers and some flies he’d tied with them. I’d never thought about tying with parrot feathers and if it were 10 years ago my reaction probably would have been, “what the heck am I going to do with these?” But since entering the free-spirited world of tenkara, I instantly thought, “oh yeah, I can see that!” The kit had orange and blue feathers which really looked different than anything I’ve seen in a fly shop. There’s something subtly different about natural colors and patterns that dyed feathers just can’t replicate. Check out the almost hypnotic properties of this blue parrot feather…
The feathers are easy to wrap as hackle and have a nice curvature for sakasa kebari, but are a bit long making them more suitable for larger hooks (maybe 10 and up). Here are a few of the examples Chris included…
I don’t have a parrot (too messy and noisy for me) plus, I don’t want one to repeat some of the choice utterances that come out of my mouth sometimes in front of my daughter, but if anyone out there does have one and wants to do some kind of trade for feathers, I’d love to experiment more with them. I think there’s lots of potential for creating unique flies using non-traditional materials like this. Also, I’d like to try some muppet fur so if you’ve got a pelt you’d be willing to snip off a swatch of, please email me.
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Those are beautiful! Nice work Chris and thanks for sharing Jason. I noticed when i scrolled down the full blue feather appeared to ((( vibrate )))!
Frank Sawyer’s Killer Bug was made from copper wire from old electrical gear and knitting wool.
Just started Tenkara …..hmm I have lots of parrot feathers from my fids ( feathered kids) …but mainly blue and green ….do those colors work?
Hi Jan, sure! I think any color would work and you could get really creative.
Hey I know this is a older article but, I have a way to get feathers from many colorful birds where the only harm done is to your pride. Many years ago when I was to tinkering with Atlantic salmon flies and Carrie Stevens long shank streamers I was always looking for colorful feathers. I found that if you are in the vicinity of a pet store and take a look at the birds you will find some real dandy feathers. Its a little humbling begging for animal cage waste but just remember it is destin for the trash anyway. When a bird is molting you may have hit the mother load. Birds are always preening and drop them all the time so its worth a look.
Hi John,
That is actually a brilliant idea! I can’t believe I haven’t heard of it before. Thanks for sharing. BTW, I used to tie a lot of salmon flies and Carrie Stevens flies back when I lived in WNY. I even had the Carrie Stevens book and used to get special Allcock long-shank hooks for them. They’re a lot of fun to tie.