Making Oversized Soft Hackle Fit Small Hooks

Article by Chuck Grimmett

I have a lot of beautiful pheasant and partridge feathers that are just too big for the sizes 12-16 flies I tie and fish. Has this happened to you, too?

As I was watching an old wet fly tying video, I noticed the tyer use a technique to size down a larger feather to make it appropriately fit a smaller hook. This sent me down a rabbit trail that opened up a new range of possibilities. I wanted to share what I found in case you run into this problem too. Perhaps it might make that cheap bag of loose partridge feathers or the remnants of that full pheasant skin useful again. 

All of these techniques can be used for both jun-style and sakasa-style kebari. 

Notch + Cinch Down

In this technique, you notch a V into the end of the feather by cutting off the tip, then you lay it on the hook at the appropriate length, cinch it down with your thread, then trim off the excess. This video demonstrates it well: 

Nicole March at The Quilted Tyer has a similar technique that only uses one side of the hackle, which she calls “The Over and Through Umbrella Technique”. Same general concept, with a slightly different execution.

Both of these work best when you force the hackle against a dubbing ball with your thread to help them splay out. 

If you want to do this sakasa-style, just tie them in the opposite direction. It might be useful to switch the order in which you tie things, too.

Distributed Collar

With this method, you bind the feather fibers down along the hook shank as the underbody, leaving the final hackle length you want extending past the hook eye. You finish the fly by pushing the hackle back and hold it in place with head wraps. 

This video from Rotary Fly Tying is a good demonstration: 

Nicole at The Quilted Tyer also has a similar technique that she calls the Pinch Wrap. She pinches the feather fibers off, ties them in over the hook eye, then pulls them back towards the shank.

In Tying and Fishing Soft Hackled Nymphs, Allen McGee calls this the Distributed Collar method.

If you want to modify this technique for a sakasa kebari, first tie a small dubbing ball or add a glass bead behind the hook eye, then tie the feathers down against this to help them splay out. 

Jason Klass uses a similar method for his fur hackled sakasa kebari.

Compensated Collar

With this method, you tie in and wrap the feather at the middle of the hook shank, tie down the excess as part of the underbody, then use thread wraps to hold the hackle down behind the eye.

Tim Flagler demonstrates in this video: 

In Tying and Fishing Soft Hackled Nymphs, Allen McGee calls this the Compensated Collar method.

Anthony Naples, frequent contributor here, uses the same method in the opposite direction to make a sakasa kebari.

So, the next time you find yourself staring at a collection of suitable, yet oversized feathers, don’t set them aside. Instead, remember that with a little ingenuity, they can be skillfully be coaxed into the perfect proportions for your smaller hooks and help fill those gaps in your fly box.

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Chuck Grimmett builds websites during the day, ties flies at night, and makes things out of wood on the weekends. He blogs at https://cagrimmett.com

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