Soft-hackle Dry Flies

John Shaner, of Hardy fame, gave me a solid dose of the soft hackle kool-aid and since I've been thoroughly enjoying tying up traditional spiders and north-country wet flies with soft hackles, I decided to see what those materials could add to some traditional dry fly techniques.

Above, is a fan-wing style Adams which grizzly soft-hackles instead of the standard dry hackles. The middle photo is a traditional red-quill but with two turns of Hungarian partridge in front of the traditional dun dry hackles.

The bottom photo is an attempt at a March Brown which a hackle fiber tail and a gold ribbed hare's ear body. I wrapped a few turns of CDC as a thorax hackle and then a few turns of dun hen hackle in front of that.

Showshoe & UV Finish Emergers

The flies above are the result of some experimentation I've done with #16 Klinkhamer hooks and snowshoe hare's feet wings. Both bodies were finished using Loon's Clear UV Finish - Thin. On the left, I spiral-wrapped dun WonderWrap with UV Pearl Flashabou wrapped between the WonderWrap spirals. On the right, I used a grizzly hackle quill. The idea is that the bodies will easily sink below the surface, with the super-boyant showshoe hare keeping them afloat in the surface film.