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In most cases if deer hair is being used as a dry fly tail the butt ends of the deer hair are generally incorporated as an under body for the fly as detailed below.

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Spinner tails are typically quite long and very fine and if you incorporate those characteristics in your flies you will find that the tails look very life like when you firstt tie your fly but once the fly has been in your fly box for a while the tails get damage and broken and the fly looks ugly. I think its better to compromise on the length of the tail and to add a couple of extra hackle fibres so that your fly will stand the test of time.

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The procedures for tying in tag tails for both dry and wet flies for a right handed fly tier are detailed below. If you are left handed please remember to switch the instructions around. Tag tails are used on both dry flies and wet flies very successfully. Whilst they may look similar there are subtle differences in the materials they should be tied from and how they should be tied.

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In most cases tails are tied into dry flies as an extension of the body and are generally incorporated in the fly design to give the fly some additional movement. If a tail is incorporated in a wet fly it is generally of much softer material than would have been used for a dry fly and for full tails as apposed to tags are generally equal between the length of the hook and these days up to 5 times the length of the hook shank.

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Hackles and hackle fibres are used in various ways in the construction of wet flies. Whilst poorer dry fly hackle capes have traditionally been used in wet flies, over recent years, specific wet fly capes and saddles have evolved by the selective breeding of various birds.

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The physics of dry flies are quite simple either they rely on buoyancy (displacement) to simply float or they rely on the materials used to be light and resist water penetration and consequently to be supported on the surface tension of the water. Just as the understanding of appropriate proportions have evolved for dry flies they have certainly developed for some wet flies.

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Dry fly down wings can be tied out of deer hair, synthetic material such as crystal flash or out of feather fibres. Whilst the directions below apply specifically to deer hair down wings the same fly tying principals apply to other types of down wings except they don't have the same degree of difficulty

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Feather slip wings should be as wide as the gape of the hook at their thickest point, be symmetrically positioned above the hook with the wings separated by an angle of between 70 degrees and 90 degrees. As for other dry fly upright wings they should be at least as long as the hackle and up to 120% of the hackle length. As for other dry fly upright wings they should be at least as long as the hackle and up to 120% of the hackle length.

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Feather tips for use as wings for a dry fly are most often taken from hackles but other feathers such as hen, blackbird, pigeon etc. are also used. Feather tip wings tied from fowl tips are generally thin and delicate but tips from other types of feathers can be a little more robust. In either case feather tip wings should be symmetrically.

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Feather slips for use as wings for a wet fly are most often taken from duck feathers but other feathers such as turkey and pheasant etc. are also used. The best feathers tend to be the secondary flight feathers as the primary feathers have much thicker barbules that can be difficult to tie in.

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