How to Work with Chicken Feather on Your Line When Fly Fishing

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Jim Dowd with Zoar Outdoor for Expert Village to talk with you about fly casting and fly fishing. So the next step is to work the thread down now that the ends of the marabou are even. Just work it down to the bend in the hook and take the estaz, which will be the body material and tie that in using a loop, make 2 turns; 3, 4, 5 and just let that hang for a moment. Next before I wrap the estaz on I want to strip this chicken feather so that I can work with it. I am going to use this part, and the part that I don’t use, I’ll just strip right off just like that leaving the stem of the feather for me to use as I wrap. I’ll put this in my waste control system, take the very end of the chicken feather and grasp it so that I have just the tips sticking out, and wrap the tip with the thread onto lashing it onto the hook. Now I just work the thread in concentric wraps all the way back up to this bead. The next step is to take the body material, separate it carefully from the marabou, and begin to wrap that around the shank of the hook. Make 1 or 2 wraps behind the chicken feather and then slowly wrap it carefully up toward the front of the hook. "