dry fly cape

[flytyingfred]

If you had to choose one dry fly cape color other than grizzly and brown what would you choose??

 

[lestrout]

yo fly

(blue) dun. Good for BWO, Hendricksons, Quill Gordons, bigger olives, Isos and Dun Variants.

 

[MKern]

My initial reaction was light ginger, but medium dun is a great choice.

I think I would stick with ginger because the most common dries that I fish are sulphurs and cahills.

 

[SteveG]

Agree with above posts. If you live by any water that has olives coming off year round, medium dun. If you fish a lot of sulfurs, cahills, etc light ginger.

Side note, I tried using prismacolor markers on light ginger, and it doesn't work well. I'm starting to get away from hackle, using it only for parachute Adams, renegades, and bivisibles.

 

[PennKev]

Another vote for medium dun. Medium and/or light dun may actually be more useful than brown IMO, and possibly more so than grizzly too. It definitely is a more natural color than most browns. While there are certainly some mayflies with brown coloration, I don't feel that brown hackles do a very good job of imitating that coloration. Duns, light gingers, sandy dun, etc all seem to be more natural color options and their placement on traditional and parachute style flies does a better job of imitating the legs and undersides of the naturals which tend to be lighter colors.

But brown hackles still work... ....so there's that.

 

[dryflyguy]

I'd pick dun also. Use that color on many patterns.
My second most used color is ginger.
I probably use these two colors on 90% of my flies

 

[falcon]

When tying a parachute dry fly should the hackle match the color of the wings or the legs of the insect?

 

[SteveG]

Usually, the legs.

 

[GenCon]

I would also pick a dun of some sort.

GenCon

 

[pugdom]

Dun grizzly. Find I use it a lot compared to other colors. Great for tricos, BWO and larger slate drakes

 

[CRB]

2nd pugdom's post. But, get a good quality cape.
I think tctrout has some very good videos on hackle and quality and how to buy.

 

[flytyingfred]

Hey guys I just wanted to thank you all for you input on the cape color this cape was not for me but for a friend of mine and I chose to go with a barred med smokey dun from Charlie Collins farm. I was not disappointed when it arrived, it was a grade one cape along with the saddle and its gorgeous!! Charley recommended a barred dun and I went with it glad I did. I also got a pack of spade hackle for tailing and what he calls a grab bag of saddles for myself both great choices. If you are looking for good customer service and good product check his website out. Thanks again and Happy Thanksgiving to all.

 

[falcon]

I would get a variant grizzly cape. The issue I have with this question is with the hackle you choose ..... what color do you want to represent ... the color of the legs of the insect or the color of the wings. When tying in the parachute style I always tie hackle colors to represent the legs of the insect opposed to the color of the wings. I am probably in the minority on this issue but have never found a valid argument against it.