Quill-style Body Materials

Intro | Thread | Dry-Fly Hackle | Foam | Wet-Fly Hackle Hackle | Plumage | Chenille | Dubbing | Hair | Quills/Biots | Yarn | Plastic | Wire | Dry-fly Wings | Wet-fly Wings | Flash | Beads | Eyes | Rubber | Adhesives | Fur and Fleece | Paint and Markers

When people think of quill bodies they generally refer to stripped hackle and peacock herl stems. With hackle, it is very easy to pull fibers off of the stem, if you pull against the grain. The Red Quill Fly uses a stripped natural brown hackle, and a Blue Quill uses a natural dark dun hackle stem.

Hackle quality isn't important, and you can use the large hackles on a neck or cheap hackle for quills. For other colors, you can use dyed hackles. On a dyed hackle, the stem color will be much lighter than the hackle color.

Peacock can be stripped by holding the tip of the herl in one hand and then scraping it with your thumbnail, while pulling it between your thumb and index finger. The other good method is to use a rubber eraser to rub off the herl. I feel bleaching is too much work.

Biots. Biot bodies are relatively new in fly tying. Biots are the fibers on a goose or turkey primary wing feather. The original use in fly tying was for tails and antennae on stonefly nymphs. However, they make very attractive quill style bodies. These fibers are tapered and when wrapped will create a body with wider segmentation as you get further up the biot, just like a natural bug. They are also much more durable than quill bodies. Turkey biots are better suited to wrapping than the shorter fibered goose. I also use them as sides on my biot-bug series of nymphs.

Another quill type body is animal body hair. The traditional Mosquito fly uses a white and black strand of elk mane for the body, and you can tie a nice red quill or rusty spinner with wrapped elk mane. A cream color fly can be tied with bleached hair.

Porcupine. Rob Mclean sells dyed porcupine quills as his Mclean's Quill bodies. They come in colors to match many hatches.

Pheasant. Pheasant tail is also a popular body material. The natural brown fibers imitate a wide range of insects and the common dyed olive or dyed black are good. If you want a similar fly in gray, use ruff grouse tail, teal body feathers, or mallard flank fibers. Wood duck will make a nice tan fly.

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