We can get what are referred to as blood quill marabou here that can be fairly long. The hackle itself has a nice taper to it, starting fairly thick and fuzzy near the quill and tapering to a hair length at the end. Excellent action in the water.
I've palmered the whole feather on a couple of occasions for steelhead flies and had pretty good results. Kind of a big leech imitation. It sounds like the feathers Hans is talking about would be much less suitable for palmering. The other type of marabou that's pretty common is called wooly bugger marabou. The individual hackles are thick and fuzzy all the way to the tip. They don't taper much and they tend to be very short. IMHO they are kind of worthless, even for wooly buggers. I much prefer the action of the blood quill. As for what type of bird they come from, the marabou is an African bird that is, I believe, endangered. I saw a couple in the Portland Zoo when I was down there last. I think I read somewhere that marabou is the underfeathers from the breast of geese. No guarantees on that, though. Marabou is probably one of the most versatile materials in my arsenal. I love the stuff. Dan Crowe Olympia, WA ----- Original Message ----- From: "Hans Weilenmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 1:35 PM Subject: Re: [VFB] Tying with Marabou (Palmered) > On 14 Mar 2002 at 15:20, Gary Miller wrote: > > > So, the marabou feathers that are long with > > stems that get somewhat thick at the base are good for palmering? > > The upper part of the feather/stem can be palmered, but the result is > generally pretty ugly. > > A bit better result can be had by splitting the stem with a sharp > blade and palmer this 'half' feather. A further, slight, improvement > can be had by fllattening this half stem. > > Personally I would use the marabou strands in a dubbing loop, no > thick stem to get in the way. > > > When using the blood feathers for streamer wings, do you recommend > > stripping the fibers from the stem, or using the entire feather (stem > > and all)? > > I generally use the full feather. If the stem is a problem (when the > wing length is close to the full length of the feather, I will snip > away carefully any stem which is in the way. In other words, I will > try to avoid having a (noticable) stem at the tie-in point. > > Cheers, > Hans > >
