The soft hackle fly pattern has been used for hundreds of years.
Fly-fishing is a method of angling that uses an artificial fly to catch fish. Flies are made of colored thread and bird feathers tied to a hook. Many anglers will tie their own flies and experiment with the sizes, materials and colors of their flies to adapt them to the location where they will be fishing. Flies can be designed to look like a variety of insects, but some flies, like the soft hackle, can be made to look like a number of insects by changing the color of the thread used in their construction.
Instructions
1. Clamp the hook by the bend with the eyelet above the barb. When catching and releasing, use a hook without a barb to easily remove the fly before releasing the fish back into the wild.
2. Wrap the thread around the body of the hook, also called the hook shank, starting at the eyelet and make smooth, touching wraps back to the spot above the end of the barb. Wrap the thread over the first layer, creating two layers of wrapped thread on the hook.
3. Select a feather with barbs that are a little longer than the shank of the hook. Tie the top, non-quilled end of the feather to the hook right behind the eyelet by wrapping the thread around the end of the feather. Tie the feather to the hook so that the barbs of the feather extend above the eyelet with the concave side facing up.
4. Grasp the quilled end of the feather and wrap the feather around the hook twice. The feather's barbs will spread apart, creating a heckled mane. Secure the feather mane to the hook with two wraps of thread. Cut off any excess feather.
5. Smooth the feather down against the body of the hook and wrap the thread around the shank several times behind the eyelet to create an imitation head for the fly. Tie the thread off with a three-turn whip finish and cut the loose thread.
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