Finding schalappen that is flat and straight with consistent length and width for deceiver style streamers can be a frustrating task. Finding a matched high quality set out of a strung schlappen bag can be near impossible. Of course, streamer grade capes and saddles like Whiting Farm’s American and Freshwater series do provide great quality feathers that are easily paired by pulling from opposite sides of the skin but lack of availability of many staple colors have made those increasingly hard to come by in recent times, and a full saddle is a bit more of an investment for a single color of fly than many tyers want to make. Galloup’s Fish Feathers from Montana Fly Company offer a great source of tailing feathers in a wide range of unique colors and patterns that fill this need.
Color variations of each Fish Feather pattern, left to right: realistic, grizzled, arrowhead, shark fin and fin tip.
These feathers were Kelly’s brainchild a few years back and the lineup of colors and patterns available have increased steadily since the first batch was released by MFC. Fish Feathers now include tri-colored grizzled, chevroned arrowhead, fin-tip, countershaded shark-fin and, most recently, realistic prints that are a near perfect match for the patterning of juvenile forage fish. In all there are now 22 total pattern and color combos available.
While certainly on the pricier side at $10 dollars for a pack of ten, the fact that every single feather in a bag is usable for their intended purpose makes the price tag worth it. While considerably cheaper per feather, in a typical bag of strung schlappen more than half the feathers are often unsuitable for use in tailing, depending, of course, on your personal standards of tying. While more uniform than any other feather on the market, there is still minor variation between feathers in a given pack. To account for this variation when tying with Fish Feathers, I’ll first take every feather out of the bag and pair them with their nearest matches in length and taper, a process that may sound tedious (and certainly isn’t mandatory for pumping out good quality flies) but usually takes just a minute or two and I personally find makes a better tail. Outside of matching and perhaps trimming to length depending on what you’re tying, there’s virtually no prep work needed with Fish Feathers. The bases of the stems even come pre-stripped for an easy tie-in.
A bag of olive/brown arrowhead Fish Feathers sorted to their nearest match by length and tip taper. Necessary to tie functional flies? Probably not, but I do feel better tying as symmetrical a tail as possible.
The tying possibilities with these feathers are endless and their multicolored patterns can add a whole new dimension to patterns that originally used monocolor tailing feathers. Effects that used to require hand coloring or laminating together individual feathers (which is still a great option to add some personal artistry to a fly and make even more custom colors–Kelly demonstrates one way to do this in his Belly Bumper tying video) can now be achieved with a single ready to tie product. A number of our favorite deceiver tailed streamer patterns like the Flathead Kitty, Kill Whitey, Bangtail, Flatliner and Slick Willy can all incorporate Fish Feathers and in fact now do in several commercially tied colors. Some of the submissions we got in our Fish Feathers contest a couple years ago can give some great inspiration for tyers looking to get started tying with these feathers. If you want to give Galloup’s Fish Feathers a try in your tying, we have the whole lineup of colors from MFC both in store and online at slideinn.com, stop in or give us a call at (406)-682-7020 anytime!
A Slick Willy variation tied using white/black shark fin Fish Feathers split at their midpoint.