Has there ever been a lovelier material for tying flies than lemon wood duck flank feathers? In our search for the latest and greatest iridescent beacon, a space-age ingredient that will attract wary or jaded fish as if to flames spotted across an empty sea, we often lose track of or forget about these elegant old-timey natural fibers that played such a large part in the original seduction of fly tyers to the craft, as well as fish to their flies. The romance of fly fishing has always included the alchemy of actual fur and feathers fabricated into a formal impression of life, a transference capable of animating primal responses from the creatures we seek to deceive.
Some of us have never recovered. Was it ever really just about catching fish? Like countless moments from my distant past, I can’t recall the first time I used or bought any lemon wood duck flank feathers, yet they seem to have been somewhere in my supplies ever since I started tying so many decades ago. One look at these pretty feathers, with their wispy fibers and delicate, dark bars, and you know immediately that they’re going to find their way into one pattern or another, even if you can’t imagine mastering the wings of a classy Catskill dry.
All tyers have materials that speak to them at some profound and perhaps even organic level; you recognize colors or shadings that mimic life in the natural world, or there’s a feel that promises properties of motion you don’t sense in other, visually similar materials. Or perhaps, as McGuane has suggested, just as certain flies can inspire one’s conviction, when we inspect various materials, we are subject to emotions that reflect the fact that like fish, we, too, are a species of prey.
Peacock herl. Partridge and grouse feathers. The versatile hare’s mask. Ringnecked pheasant tails. From the moment we begin tying flies and paying fresh attention to what bugs look like on the water, many of us recognize that it’s an impression we want on the end of our leaders, not an exact representation, and that certain materials suggest what we’re looking for without asserting claims of infallible imitation. There are very few tan or cream or yellow mayfly or caddisfly patterns that couldn’t be enhanced by a few judiciously placed lemon wood duck flank feather fibers. The few innovative tyers I know are the ones who make these subtle adjustments with tried-and-true materials, avoiding attempts at wholesale changes to proven patterns.
After all, the smartest tyers I know are pretty darn good anglers, as well.
They don’t place excessive faith in precise imitations; they want something close enough, while leaning toward patterns that also suggest an all-around bugginess that inspires confidence even when fish aren’t up and visually feeding. Mostly, they understand that the fly tied to their tippet is only one aspect of the game. Dave Hughes, who likes the old Light Cahill wet fly as an imitation for the Yellow Sally stonefly hatch, will fish this pattern just as he would a dry fly, a drifting nymph, a swinging emerger, or even a likely looking lure dangling downstream on the end of a taut line. The point is, the pattern, originally tied with that lovely lemon wood duck flank feather wing to imitate Catskill mayfly hatches, crosses over nicely to the Yellow Sally hatch, especially when fished in the variety of ways that trout might encounter these seasonally important bugs.
A host of other traditional wet flies, tied with traditional materials, assume this same logic: good enough for one hatch, but quite possibly effective in other situations, as well, as long as the angler is ready to employ a range of techniques that present the fly in the different ways fish may recognize such food in the stream. Clearly, it’s never wrong to attempt to imitate the precise stage, say, of a specific hatch. The suggestion here, however, is that a traditional fly such as
the Light Cahill wet can cover not only different hatches, but also different stages of a hatch, allowing the angler to explore the different casts and presentations that are often the real key to triggering a strike, while at the same time keeping the fly in the water, the only place I’ve ever found they actually catch fish.
If you’re inspired to tie a few Light Cahill wets, I should make you aware of a curious aspect of those pretty lemon wood duck flank feathers. It’s the reason I’m posting this column at this time of year, rather than in the spring, which is when we encounter the Yellow Sally stoneflies. Unlike so many things we purchase today, including much of our food, lemon wood duck flank feathers are available only seasonally. Wood ducks are hunted in the late fall and early winter, and if you go to buy lemon wood duck flank in the spring or summer, there’s a chance, depending on the year, that your local fly shop or even online site will be out of stock. I searched this past March and was told by every single supplier I contacted that, sorry, I would have to back order.
Despite the inconvenience, I was somehow heartened by this shortage. One of the reasons I enjoy fishing so much is that it anchors me within the cycle of seasons. Bugs and fish and birds move with the changing cant of the sun, and though I might believe, thanks to the Internet, that I can do anything or be anywhere at any time of year, I can, in reality, fish for trout feeding on Yellow Sallies for a only very brief period in any given year. Such limits tend to make me appreciate these moments more than if I could obtain them, like so many other things in life, simply by sharing the details of my Mastercard.
If I were to posit a guess, I might also suggest that part of the enduring appeal of tying and fishing traditional patterns such as the Light Cahill wet is the use of genuine fur and feathers, often procured seasonally from hunters afield. That those pretty flank feathers were plucked from a wood duck downed by a hunter and carried shoreward in the mouth of a happy retriever may not appeal to everyone, but for some of us, it opens a wider window onto the history and lore of the sport of fly fishing. For a number of reasons that I don’t need to go into here, it’s easy to forget at times that some of the materials we secure to our hooks to imitate insects or other baits were once part of the bodies of living and breathing creatures, some of them as wild as the fish we hope to fool. For those of us with an appreciation for and fascination with the natural world, there’s a certain symmetry to all of this, one that seems a little less balanced when employing, say, carpet fibers produced in million-ton lots by the likes of DuPont in colors derived from chemicals created by their friends at Dow.
Which is only to say that trying your hand at a half dozen or so Light Cahill wets just might help you recall some larger purpose to this frivolous game.
Materials
Hook: 2X stout or 1X fine, size 12 to 16
Thread: Tan or pale yellow Hackle: Light ginger hen Tail: Light ginger hackle fibers Body: Cream fox fur or similar
Wing: Lemon wood duck flank fibers
Tying Instructions
Step 1: Secure the hook in the vise and start the thread just behind the hook eye. As for most traditional wets, I tie this one on a variety of hooks, from the short, stout, old Mustad 3906 to any sort of fine-wire dry-fly hook. The idea is to enhance the versatility of the pattern so that it can be offered up in a range of different presentations. A fine-wire size 12 is just about perfect for little Yellow Sallies. Also, I continue to use the last of my Pearsall’s Gossamer Silk for size 12 and 14 traditional wet flies, switching to finer modern threads for smaller sizes.
Step 2: Choose a hen hackle feather with fibers about the length of the hook shank or twice the width of the hook gap. Strip the downy waste from the base of the feather. With the concave or good side of the feather facing you and the tip pointing forward from the hook eye, tie in the stem along the top of the hook shank. The goal is to have the feather positioned so that when you wind it later, back from the hook eye, the hackle fibers slant back without having to be tortured into place with your thread.
Step 3: Wind the thread or silk to the aft end of the hook shank, stopping just above or slightly behind the point of the hook. Clip a long feather from the top or sides of your hen neck. Remove six to eight fibers from the feather, keeping the tips aligned. Measure the fibers against the hook shank — the tail should end up about that length. Tie in the fibers as a tail, adding a turn or two under its root to cock the tail slightly upward. When tying with silk, I cut the excess butts of the tail fibers so they extend forward the length of the body, then run my silk in even wraps all the way forward and then back to the root of the tail, creating an even foundation for the body dubbing with a strong layer of thread color underneath.
Step 4: Wax the thread and twist on a wee bit of dubbing. I saved some underfur from a patch of fox used for winging steelhead flies and ended up with a pile of beautiful material. I find you can never dub lightly enough, especially when tying with silk. A touch is all it takes. Wind the dubbed thread forward, creating an evenly tapered body. Stop the body well short of the forward end of the fly, leaving plenty of space for the hackle, the wing, and the head.
Step 5: With the thread well back from the eye of the hook, secure the tip of the protruding hackle feather in your hackle pliers and make three turns back toward the thread. Then catch the stem of the hackle feather under a turn of thread and continue winding the thread forward, directly through the hackle fibers. Trim the excess hackle stem. Take a few turns of thread in front of the hackle fibers, directing any errant fibers rearward while maintaining space for the wing.
Step 6: Finally, those lovely wood duck flank feathers. Align the tips of 8 to 10 fibers from one side of a feather and clip or pull them from the stem. Measure the wing against the hook shank; I like my wing about the length of the body, perhaps longer, to the midpoint of the tail, if I’m really trying to imitate those little Yellow Sallies. That’s getting pretty fussy, but it might be just the thing to get you to tie on the fly, even if the trout don’t seem to care. Tie in the wing directly behind the hook eye, clip the butts, then create a tidy head, whip finish, and saturate the thread wraps with lacquer or your favorite head cement.
