Tails on soft hackles - does it matter?

[PaScoGi]

Most videos I see of soft hackles or spiders dont have tails. I am talking about partrige & orange, partridge & yellow, etc. The simple patterns that are just thread, partridge collar, and for some tyers a peacock thorax. But I have never seen any tyer use a coq de leon tail or anything.

Is it because these patterns arent really imitating an emerging bug and are more of an "attractor" style fly? I love swinging these flies but I might start tying in some tails just to see if it matters.

Probably doesn't, just wanted to ask the old timers on here why these patterns never seem to be tied with any type of tail.

 

[Bamboozle]

Because they just aren't traditionally tied with tails nor do they need tails.

The beauty of soft hackles or spiders is they are attractor patterns that can imitate several different insects at different life stages so you catch fish, you can pretend the fish took it for whatever you want...

In regards to the necessity of tails; I have no science to back it up but IMHO tails are the most insignificant part of a fly in regards to triggering strikes.

If you want to add them to your soft hackles, go for it but I doubt it will make any or much of a difference to the fish.

 

[jifigz]

I tie certain soft hackle patterns with tails, and so do some other folks. Soft hackle pheasant tails I will often put a tail on. Tightline Video's sulphur soft hackle has a tail, and man, that pattern has caught me a lot of fish over the years.

I am talking about the pattern that has a wire body of either yellow or orange, a pheasant tail tail, and a partridge feather. Dang good pattern.

 

[mt_flyfisher]

Videos? What the heck are videos? Don’t believe everything you see on videos. They’re just fairy tails.

Here’s some wet flys that were sold long before videos, before computers, before TV’s.

Seriously, flies change over time. What’s popular one day, isn’t as popular the next day. But they will all catch fish. If you want to put a tail on a popular wet fly that doesn’t have a tail on it, by all means put one on it. It’ll probably catch as many fish as a fly that doesn’t have a tail.

 

[jifigz]

Videos? What the heck are videos? Don’t believe everything you see on videos. They’re just fairy tails.

Here’s some wet flys that were sold long before videos, before computers, before TV’s.

View attachment 1641241228

Seriously, flies change over time. What’s popular one day, isn’t as popular the next day. But they will all catch fish. If you want to put a tail on a popular wet fly that doesn’t have a tail on it, by all means put one on it. It’ll probably catch as many fish as a fly that doesn’t have a tail.

Whoa, whoa! Hold yer' horses, John. "wet flies" and "soft hackles" are definitely not the same type of flies. Are they similar and related, yes, but they are different.

 

[mt_flyfisher]

Whoa, whoa! Hold yer' horses, John. "wet flies" and "soft hackles" are definitely not the same type of flies. Are they similar and related, yes, but they are different.

Ah, c’mon, Josh. That’s a pretty fine line. You’d think you’re an English teacher distinguishing between the two. 😃

You want to really understand what wet flies are, consider reading this book.

 

[Bamboozle]

Ah, c’mon, Josh. That’s a pretty fine line. You’d think you’re an English teacher distinguishing between the two. 😃

You want to really understand what wet flies are, consider reading this book.

View attachment 1641241231

Page 11...

 

[mt_flyfisher]

Most videos I see of soft hackles or spiders dont have tails. I am talking about partrige & orange, partridge & yellow, etc. The simple patterns that are just thread, partridge collar, and for some tyers a peacock thorax. But I have never seen any tyer use a coq de leon tail or anything.

An invasive maybe?

 

[Tups]

Yes, a British Invasion.
OP: Soft hackle flies developed in the borderlands between north England and the Scottish lowlands. Before they were known as soft hackles, they were generally called North Country flies, and before that Spiders. A few patterns have tails, but most do not. The Brits who first tied them wanted a fly which fished just below the surfaced. G.E.M. Skues, a prominent south country fly fisher and writer, surmised that a tail-less fly resulted in a quick entry into the water, making a subsurface posture more likely.

 

[nfrechet]

a little tail never hurt anybody 😁😁

 

[Tups]

Page 11...

To Hell with Fishing. P. 11

 

[Bamboozle]

Still funny after 80 years after it was published...

 

[mt_flyfisher]

When does a spider become a wet fly and when does a wet fly become a soft hackle? During the time that an Orange Partridge became a Partridge and Orange?

Read the entire article (not only the part included in this picture): https://www.flyanglersonline.com/oldsite/features/oldflies/part374.php

 

[troutbert]

Soft hackles are wet flies.

At least when you throw them in the water.

 

[dc410]

I tie and fish a lot of soft hackle flies. Some I tie with tails others I tie without a tail, mainly based on the traditional methods for tying different patterns of soft hackles. I honestly don’t think a tail or lack thereof really has a significant impact on a flies effectiveness. When I do utilize a tail lately I’ve been tying them angled up a bit with the idea that it’s possible to get more motion from a tail tied angled up than straight off of the bend of the hook. Not sure theres any validity to that concept but I think it looks good and adds a bit more confidence when I’m fishing flies with tails.

 

[ROVERT]

I would have said all soft hackles are wet flies but not all wet flies are soft hackles.

 

[Tups]

When does a spider become a wet fly and when does a wet fly become a soft hackle? During the time that an Orange Partridge became a Partridge and Orange?

Read the entire article (not only the part included in this picture): https://www.flyanglersonline.com/oldsite/features/oldflies/part374.php

View attachment 1641241245

Paul Schullery answers these questions in his book “Fly Fishing Secrets of the Ancients.”

In the mid seventeenth century Thomas Barker gives us the first instructions in English on the known methods of fly tying. At that time he states that there were two types of flies: 1. flies proper having fur-dubbed bodies and wings but no hackes, and 2. Palmered flies ( wooly worms today). Palmers were tied using poultry hackles. There were no dry flies, wet flies, nymphs or streamers, or anything else; just “flies.”

This was the case for almost two hundred more years until the development of the “floating fly,” eventually renamed dry flies. In the middle of the nineteenth century, anglers in southern England began to intentionally tie dry flies using stiff rooster hackles to match the hatches on the chalk streams. Those anglers coined the term “ wet fly” to distinguish the old fashioned flies from the new dry fly. They often disparagingly referred to wet flies as “ sunk flies.”

Meanwhile, sometime in the eighteenth century fishermen in the north of England began tying their palmers with a hackle only at the head of the fly. They continued to refer to them as “flies” and sometimes “ spiders” to distinguish them from winged flies and palmers, though they continued to tie those as well. These northern flies were most often tied using game bird and song bird hackles. Eventually, these hackle flies were known as “north country flies” to distinguish them from the dry flies of the south. Sometime in the 1920s G.E.M. Skues coined the term “ soft hackled flies” to further distinguish the north country patterns from the stiff hackled dry flies of the south.