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Peacock herl is the individual barbules off a peacock feather. It is wonderful fly tying material and as well as exhibiting its own natural highlight it exhibits various colours ranging from shades of greens through to various shades of blue. Individual herl can be used to dress a body on small flies but it is more common to use a number of herl to dress a body on a fly. The reason multiple herl are used in a rope form to create a body on a fly is firstly to generate more volume and secondly and more importantly to use the thread to reinforce the otherwise relatively fragile herl.

The technique for roping peacock herl and tying a peacock herl rope body for a right handed fly tier is as follows. If you are left handed please remember to switch the instructions around.

The same technique applies for both dry and wet flies.

Process

A	The best herl has wide flue (the small individual fibres) along its whole length of the individual herl. It is best to tie in an equal number of herl and to tie in half from the butt end after trimming of the white butt section and half by the tips. By doing this you avoid a situation , particularly with poorer quality herl , of the finished body showing nice wide flue at one end and poorer thinner flue at the other end of the body. Poorer quality herl may have uneven or very little flue and is unsuitable for building up a herl body.

B	You will already have wound thread in touching turns from just behind the eye of the hook to the bend of the hook and probably have tied in a tag or tail. The first step in the tying in herl for a roped herl body is to take the thread to exactly the position where the roped herl body is to start. For small flies in most cases this will be the bend of the hook. Tie the herl in using a fly tiers pinch and trim the butt ends of the herl.

C	If I am building a plumper style of body on a fly particularly larger flies where I am using more than two herl I like to tie the herl in where I intend the body to finish and the wings to start and then bind it along the top of the shank of the hook to where the body is to start.

D	The benefit of doing this is that the herl tied along the top of the hook shank already provides some body thickness and reduces the wraps of herl rope required to build a body. It also makes the body higher so that the gape of the hook is not closed as much as would otherwise be the case.

E	Wind the herl around the thread to form a rope. If you wind the herl just four or five wraps round the thread anticlockwise on a thread that you will be wrapping round the hook clockwise then as you wind the herl rope round the hook shank it will automatically twist more herl onto the thread. Resist the temptation of making the rope too tight as you want the rope body on the finished fly to be light enough so as to not sink the finished fly and light enough so that the body can shed water with a couple of false casts.

F	Now wind the herl rope along the hook shank to form the body. It may be necessary to take a couple of double wraps in the middle of the body to get the body shape required. Keep in mind however that the minimum wraps required to create the desired body the better.

G	When the body has been created tie the herl off and trim the butt ends of the herl without cutting the thread.

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