It’s been happening for a while, so it’s not brand new, but it appears to be getting more serious these days.
I’m talking about the craze among young women for using long skinny dry fly feathers as hair extensions.
They’re called, not surprisingly, feather extentions
I’m not talking about the feathers and flowers people wore in their hair in the hippie days. I’m talking about a salon crimping process that locks them in.
I talked to one woman wearing them the other day who said she uses them for hoop dancing, which I’ve never heard of until then.
If I wasn’t a hoarder of fly tying materials, I’d be a little worried. My fly shop friends tell me it’s hard to find a good dry fly saddle these days because kids and salons are snapping them all up.
Brita at the Avid Angler Fly Shop in Lake Forest Park says the shop has put aside some of the 7- to 10-inch feathers for the teens who drop by, but that mostly it’s hard to get good saddles for tiers these days because of the demand.
An eBay watcher, Brita says the feathers have been selling there briskly for the past few months. She said that there used to be fewer than 200 feather extension items for sale. Now, she there are well over 1,000.
I use the feathers to make extremely effective baitfish patterns for salmon and searun cutthroat trout.
I still have a lot of saddles dyed by Ken Abrames, who literally wrote the book on tying flat wing baitfish patterns. It’s called “A Perfect Fish: Illusions in Fly Tying” To check out Abrames book on Amazon Click here
If your dry fly saddles have been looking a little bald these days, check your daughter’s hair.
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