It happens everyday. A perfectly good fly is mercilessly mutilated by trimming down its hackle, leaving nothing but horrific, ungodly stumps of barbules. These poor victims are scarred for life and nothing can reintegrate them back into mainstream fly box culture. They become the “untouchables” of their fly box compartments.
You might think hackle clipping isn’t a big problem but it’s actually very common–it’s just not widely reported. Some analysts say as many as 100 flies are “clipped” per day worldwide while others put the number much higher. But because of the stigma associated with it, it’s impossible to know for sure. Welcome to the seedy underbelly of the fly tying world.
It starts out innocently enough. A tier finishes a fly and realizes the hackle they used was too long. “Why not just trim it down to size with scissors?”, they think. After the first one, they’re hooked and it becomes a slippery slope into clipping addiction. Suddenly, no hackle is too big–just cut it down to size later.
Crime scene: a victim of clipped hackle and the perp’s alleged weapon of choice: a pair of Dr. Slicks
Luckily, Hackle Clipping Syndrome (HCS) is easily treatable in most cases. A tier simply needs to get a prescription of the correct-sized hackle from a fly shop and follow a strict regimen of using it for 3-4 weeks until they feel comfortable with the right proportions.
A fly tied by a fully recovered CHS patient
With support from their family, local fly shop, and a little will power, a fly tier can tie beautiful flies without feeling the urge to clip. And before you say “you don’t know what it’s like”, I’ll admit that I’m a former clipper myself. 20 years of recovery. So all I’ll say to you is that there is life beyond CHS. And it’s good.
Guilty. Trying to recover… Every now and then I relapse.
I used to do this when I started tying flies but with some coaxing from a Tenkara Facebook group I quit the clipping, my flies are much better now.
This [a href=”http://www.tenkaratimes.com/tenkara-tutorial/sekasa-kebari/kebari-library/woolykebari”]Pearl & Wooly kebari[/a]was to die an honorable death while hanging on the bushes because of your famous precision casting. It is the best fly of all time, catches every species any waters even being 90% chewed. Instead, you subjected her infamous clipping. You are guilty!
Sorry Oleg, but a sacrifice had to be made for the greater good. This kebari is a martyr!
I will take revenge and I’ll send you two dozen of the same …
Awesome writing and story telling! Pulitzer??
great stuff, though you could have just use photoshop to “trim” it down. just saying… =p
Hi Jason,
That’s why I don’t tie. I made a deal with a good tying friend of mine. I give him a bottle of his favorite Single Malt & he ties them for me.
We are both happy and I stay sane!
Bob, I could live with that arrangement if you ever need another tier. 🙂
I hope this post is tongue in cheek. If a serious one, then you are an idiot.
James,
Since this post is filed under the “humor” category, only an idiot would think it’s serious. 🙂
touche. a lot of people on another board took you seriously because when the link is clicked, it does not show up listed under humor. nor does the humor category show at the top of this page that i can see.
Hi James. It shows below the title of the post. But aside from that, I think the tone comes across as pretty tongue in cheek. Just curious, which board was it where people took it seriously?
Nothing on this page related to ‘humor’ shows on my browser. I don’t remember which board I saw the link on. I was bored the other night so I scanned a multitude of them. I’ve read a lot of ridiculous things on the net, and there is a good degree of idiocy in some of them, which is why I predicated my initial comment with the tongue in cheek.
James, sorry, it looks like the categories only appear on the blog page, not the individual post: