Viking Lars | Saturday, 10 December 2022
I think I’ve written about it before, but all of a sudden golden pheasant has become approximately as hard to get as panda fur. They used to cost jus a few pounds/dollars/kroners. Golden pheasant is a common materials in probably hundreds of patterns, even some Danish saltwater flies, like Omoe-Boersten and Autumn Fly. As as I’ve been told, it’s a result of an import ban (maybe export ban - not sure) on Chinese birds, because of the bird flu.
Golden pheasant has some quite characteristic properties. The fibres are long, translucent, a love red/brownish colour with a bit of variation as the back of the feathers are lighter than the front. And these are just the breast feathers. Even more patterns use the crest feathers on the head of the bird and the tipper feathers certainly aren’t uncommon as well. So the bird as such is had to find substitutes for.
The crest feathers are so translucent and shiny that there are plenty of synthetics that will do well. The tippet feathers are harder with their triangular shape and banded, natural orange colours. They are common in classic salmon flies as whole feathers and a lot of wet flies use fibres for tails. I suppe you could get a away with orange hackle fibres and a black marker pen, but you miss the texture of the tippet feather.
The red breast feather isn’t too hard to replicate. Yes, the stiffness and the length of fibres combined are, but the colour and length alone isn’t too hard. This is simply a dyes schlappen feather I had. I had been dyeing some fur fairy brown, had surplus dye in the pot and threw in these schlappen. The colour isn’t perfect, a bit too red, but if I wanted, I could probably get closer.
The end of the story is that the fish obviously don’t care about all these details, so I don’t either, which of course isn’t true. But I’m not going to obsess about it - just work around it.
Have a great weekend!
Lars