Hairwing Streamers aka Bucktails

The bucktail, man what a perfect fly tying material. If you follow this blog you well know i love streamer flies. Many of the feather wing Rangeley style flies are represented here. These flies are gorgeous and truly works of art. But they are fishing flies and will get it done when called upon.

But this is about the meat and potato flies called bucktails. These flies have a basic simple body, some color in the form of hackle fibers and hair form a whitetail deer. The buck tail comes in natural and many dyed colors. Your imagination can run wild when creating these flies. Although I used the whole tail in selecting the hair I especially like the back of the tail for my bucktail streamers. The natural is just super and the colored ones although primarily brown have a tint of the dye of the color. This is subtle but when wet makes a big difference.
 

 

Here are a few hairwing streamer flies. In here are bucktails and some squirrel tailed streamers.
 

As you can see I tie them both on the sparse side and some a little more fuller.
 

This simple bucktail was tied using the backside of the tail. You can see the nice taper along with the lighter front and a darker tail.
 

In this one, a squirrel tail is tied a little fuller. Squirrel tail will fill out near the head as it moves through the water, a beautiful impression.
 

This male brook trout took the bucktail as it moved swiftly through the stream.
 

This brook trout took the squirrel tail very aggressively  as it was stripped quickly.

I will post just how to tie these in a future post.