Whiting Hackle Breakdown: Dry Fly Colors and Phases

Today we’re diving into one of the more confusing yet essential aspects of Whiting dry fly hackle: color phases. Unintuitive color names like “badger” can be confusing, and determining which colors will work best with the bugs you want to imitate is not always straightforward. In this post, we’ll explore phases of color from common to rare and how they are most commonly used. 

Hackle Color Phases

Most color variations can be generally classified into a few key phases. The predominant phases and the degree of variations within them varies depending on the line of hackle. First, let’s look at the overarching phases that make up the Red Label line:

  • Grizzly: One of the most useful colors in dry fly tying. Almost any mayfly can be decently imitated decently with grizzly hackle. The most common grizzly variation in Red Label is barred ginger.
Whiting Hackle Breakdown: Dry Fly Colors and Phases

A standard Red Label Grizzly

  • Browns: Brown hackle will range from light to dark shades and hackle within this spectrum can be referred to as “ginger” despite really being a shade of brown. Combining a brown and grizzly hackle is how you tie an Adams, and those two colors will get you through the majority of dry fly patterns functionally.\
Whiting Hackle Breakdown: Dry Fly Colors and Phases

A standard Red Label brown

  • Badger: Badger is any hackle with a black centerline. The most common badger hackles are silver (cream or white barbs), golden (light brown or ginger spectrum barbs), and furnace (dark brown spectrum barbs). Functionally, badger hackles are useful for creating a contrast between the contrast and legs/wings which is common amongst mayflies.
Whiting Hackle Breakdown: Dry Fly Colors and Phases

Golden Badger

Hebert Miner hackle falls predominantly on the dun spectrum, but grizzlies exist as well:

  • Dun: From an entomology standpoint, “dun” refers to an adult mayfly that has emerged from its nymph exoskeleton and the color phase “dun” is intended to classify the spectrum of colors that dun mayflies fall into. Generally the dun spectrum is a grayscale, but Whiting includes dun variants that have brown tones within the dun classification. This is useful because many mayflies such as Hexagenia and March Browns fall outside of a traditional grayscale. Hebert dun hackle also frequently has speckled variants which is useful for imitating mayflies with mottled coloration.
Whiting Hackle Breakdown: Dry Fly Colors and Phases

A Hebert Light Grey Dun with a lot of speckling

Whiting Hackle Breakdown: Dry Fly Colors and Phases

A very rich Hebert Brown Grey Dun

  • Grizzly: The main difference in Hebert grizzly hackle from Red Label is a much wider range of color variation. Whereas the barring on a Red Label grizzly is usually close to black, the barring on a Hebert grizzly generally falls within the dun spectrum.
Whiting Hackle Breakdown: Dry Fly Colors and Phases

A Hebert Dun Grizzly

Heritage hackle comes in all the aforementioned phases and variations, however badgers and champagne variants tend to be much more common than in the other lines. Although badgers are produced in the Red Label line, they are becoming more rare so breeding Heritage to produce them has made the phase more readily available to tyers. “Champagne” is a variation where the edges of the hackle have a shiny silver or gold bubbling effect. While champagne variants exist in the Hebert line, they are much more readily available in the Heritage line. Champagne variants most commonly appear on badger or dun hackle. 

Whiting Hackle Breakdown: Dry Fly Colors and Phases

A Heritage saddle with a heavy Champagne effect

Rare Variants

There are a number of rare variants that are popular amongst collectors and command higher prices than the standard phases. Cree, Rusty Dun, and Coch-Y-Bonddu are the most notable rare variants. Cree and Dun Cree are essentially a tri-tone of white, black or dun, and ginger. The quality of a Cree depends mostly on the vibrance and proportionality between these colors and a really high quality Cree will look like a long string of jungle cock eyes. The functional purpose of Cree is to tie an Adams with a single feather. A Rusty Dun will generally transition from dun to brown as you move outward along the barbs but there can be a lot of variation within those colorations. Coch-Y-Bonddu is exceedingly rare and is essentially a furnace with black tips. It creates a very unique segmentation when wrapped.

Whiting Hackle Breakdown: Dry Fly Colors and Phases

A fairly standard Cree

Whiting Hackle Breakdown: Dry Fly Colors and Phases

A Hebert Rusty Dun

Dyed Hackle: Mayfly Series

Beyond the natural colors, dyed hackle also exists for the purpose of attractor tying and imitating more vibrantly colored bugs like green drakes. Whiting has made strides in the accuracy of mayfly coloration for BWO’s, PMD’s, and Green Drakes through the Mayfly Series. These hackles are dyed over ginger variants and the dye lots have been refined to accurately mimic natural insects. Despite some reluctance in the purist fly tying community about dyed hackles, they can make a huge difference when targeting selective trout.

Whiting Hackle Breakdown: Dry Fly Colors and Phases

A Mayfly Series in Golden Olive dyed over Medium Barred Ginger

Conclusion: Navigating the Color World of Whiting Hackle

No matter what bugs you are trying to imitate, there is a color from Whiting that will meet your needs. Whether you want to keep it simple with Red Label grizzlies and browns or utilize unique variants to tie bugs that no one else has, Whiting has you covered.

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