How to Tie a Peacock Curl: Basic Fly Tying Instructions

Video Transcript

"In this clip I am going to be demonstrating how to tie a body on a fly made of peacock curl. Peacock curl are the individual feather fibers from the tail feathers of a peacock and as you can see, they bundle them up with these little thread wrapped stems so that you can kind of control it. What you want to do is to find just 3 or 4 and you pull out a couple of these fibers. They are kind of unruly so you have to get used to working with them. I am going to use 4 fibers. There is a white tip on these fibers that is irritating, gets in the way and you just want to clip that white stuff right off. Just clip it flush right there. You tie this end on the back of your fly to do a peacock curl body and you wrap your thread up to the front and here we have the peacock curl. Rub your fingers across it a couple of times so that all those fibers on it stand up. Now to get a really beautiful peacock curl body you want those fibers twisted. In order to twist the fibers, one of the easiest ways to accomplish that is clip them flush on the end, take a pair of hackle pliers and capture all 4 fibers in the hackle pliers, go ahead and spin the material and keep it nice and loose so you don’t put that tension that causes the break. You hold the hackle pliers and you very gently when you are working with peacock you have to be gentle. Have to be really careful around the point and barb of the hook because peacock curl is pretty fragile and you can break it very easily. You just kind of start working your way forward and twists as necessary to keep that nice fuzzy appearance to the body of your fly. Sometimes depending on the length of the hook, you actually will have to tie in 2 or 3 times to actually finish a body because a single peacock curl strand may not be long enough."