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I have to admit I am a
complete fly tying materials tart. I have ultimate
admiration for those tyers who say no I don’t need
this new ‘must-have’ material. As soon as I see
something different my mind goes in to overdrive and I
want to get to the vice ASAP to see how I can
incorporate it into a fly. I have to admit it is
not just restricted to official materials for sale and I
am always eyeing up my friends and family’s pets,
carpets, packaging etc for that new wonder material.
Fortunately I recognise
the symptoms of my disease (which has been classified
and named as Flytyer’s Eye*) and recognise that the cure
is regular trips to the tackle shop to stock up on
materials. Now fortunately (or unfortunately from
my wife’s perspective) I walk past Grangers tackle shop
on my way home from work in South Kensington and am only
10 minutes drive from Pete Cockwill’s shop in Albury.
It was on one of my
weekly visits to Pete’s shop (or if my wife is reading
this yearly visit) that I noticed he had a couple of
packages of Impala hide. I don’t need to say much
more other than money changed hands and I left with some
Impala.
Now
for you older tyers (or American tyers) impala used to
be the name given to calf tail hair. However this
impala is from the genuine antelope variety from Africa
(Aepyceros
melampus
if you want to be precise about it).
A
female impala (Aepyceros
melampus)
note
the black M on the rump and tail – a good field
identification tip.
Hair of Africa mammals is
rarely used in fly tying and this, as much as anything
is probably due to fly tyers being predominately from
the developed countries of the northern hemisphere and
therefore their lack of access to these materials rather
than their suitability for fly tying.
All hair
has different properties and as fly tiers we have
exploited this in innumerable
patterns especially the hair of species in Northern
Europe and North America. Species of Deer, Elk,
Moose form the staple heart of our hair based dry fly
patterns and using the hair from these species to create
hair wings are nothing new. The elk hair caddis
being a particularly good pattern for overall shape and
‘floatability’ and the Deer hair based Sedgehog and
Halfhog (Buzz Lightyear or Hogwarts of some authors)
also being particular favourites of mine.
Whilst getting to
grips with the feel of the impala hair – it became clear
that as a hot climate species there are fundamental
differences that can be exploited as a tyer.
Firstly impala has no under fur (the down fluff-like fur
that has to be combed out when using deer hair etc) –
basically living in the heat on the Veldt in southern
Africa doesn’t require a second level of insulation
provided by the under fur. This adaptation to
warmer climate also gives the fur another property in
that each individual hair is near to parallel as
possible. If you look at say Moose hair you can
really see the taper on individual hairs – this is again
needed for insulation, with the wider at the base hairs
providing a denser and warmer coat next to the skin.
It is this fine
nature of the impala hair caused by it tapering very
steadily that provides some nice properties to the tyer.
This fineness allows the hair to take the form of the
body it is tied to without the manic splaying and
spinning seen in deer hair etc. This means that
very precise and shaped hair wings can be created.
An
impala hide
notice the
grading of colour from the dark brown at the spine
to the
light fawn at the flank.
I have been messing
about and creating various emerger patterns using fine
wire shrimp hooks (Kamasan B100’s) and flexifloss for
the abdomen and seals fur for the thorax. When I
put the impala hair onto this as the wing the final
result didn’t look too bad. Various colours and
shades of abdomen and thorax were tried along with the
various shades of brown that can be found as you travel
from the spine area (dark brown) on the impala hide
towards the flanks (very light fawn). |
