Hackle is included on dry flies for both appearance and function. The hackle serves to imitate legs, and dun, spinner, or cripple wings depending on how they are tied in. Hackle is most commonly employed in one of three ways on a dry fly: wraps around the thorax, wraps around a parachute post, or as a hackle stacker. The color of hackle serves to imitate various bug species. Functionally, hackle is included to take advantage of water surface tension and float the fly.
The Whiting Dry Fly Lineup
Whiting offers three primary lines of hackle for dry flies:
The lines are differentiated by their parent stock and while they have distinct qualities, each of the lines will have key commonalities that make them exception dry fly hackle. Those factors are a supple rachis or stem, high barbular count and long, consistently shaped feathers. The supple rachis is important for ease-of-use as stiff hackle is hard to wrap and breaks easily. A high barbular count allows you to take full advantage of surface tension with minimal wraps. Long feathers are easier to handle and consistent barb lengths translate to the consistency of your flies. While there are small but notable differences in feather properties across the lines, coloration is the most significant differentiator.
Red Label
Whiting Red Label is probably the most popular of the four lines. Red label coloration generally falls into one of three buckets: Grizzly, Barred Ginger, and Brown. While variation exists within these buckets, Red Label tends to have more consistent coloration than Hebert Miner or Heritage. Red Label is great for tyers looking for consistency and standard colors. A worthwhile imitation of nearly any mayfly can be tied with grizzly and/or brown hackle. Whiting recently began dying over Red Label barred gingers to create the Mayfly Series which uses dye lots aimed to perfectly imitate common mayflies like Baetis and PMDs. Functionally, Red Label tends to have the stiffest barbs which has made it extremely popular for parachutes.
Hebert Miner
Hebert Miner hackle is probably the most historic and sought-after line by collectors. Hebert hackle tends to come in a wide spectrum of rich dun colors. Barbs tend to be a little softer than Red Label which is worse for floatation but allows for buggy movement on the water. They are most popular for hackling traditional style dry flies but certainly not limited to that.
Heritage
The Heritage line is newer and less well known by tyers. Heritage produces a high proportion of badger and champagne variants which are uncommon in the other lines. Heritage was conceived with the idea of maintaining a larger size range to tie Catskills-style and attractor dries.
Saddles vs. Capes: What’s the Difference?
Understanding the difference between saddles and capes is essential when selecting hackle. Saddles are located at the hind end of the bird and the feathers tend to be longer, more supple, and in a more narrow range of sizes than capes. Being longer and more supple, they are generally more user-friendly to work with. The majority of feathers on a saddle will fall between two sizes so they are great for tyers who tie mass quantities of certain bugs.
Capes come from the bird’s neck and feature a wider variety of sizes. Most capes have a solid number of feathers from 10s to 20s. As such, they are great for tyers who want to tie a range of patterns. For beginners, we usually recommend starting with capes as they provide more flexibility in terms of what you can tie.
Hackle Grading
Whiting Hackle is classified into five grades: Pro, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. As you go up in grade, you can expect higher feather count, longer feathers, higher barbular count, more consistent size along a single feather, a suppler rachis, and higher proportion of fully-developed tips.
Conclusion
The array of offerings from Whiting can be daunting but hopefully this shed some light on what to look for depending on your needs. We will continue to dive further into the Whiting lineup with breakdowns on selecting dry fly hackle, grading, dry fly colors and phases, hen hackle, Coq de Leon, American, and cree.