Hey, Chuck-
I'm not sure if this will help or not, but I use canadian goose
biots (the "thicker" part of the wing feather that is super-stiff if
you try to fan the fibers out from the stem) all of the time for biot-
bodies. These fibers are from the "not- wide side" of the feather,
and when peeled from the feather's quill / stem, have an elongated
triangle taper to their appearance. I tie them in by the point and
then wrap the feather biot up the hook shank to give a segmented look
to the body. I can send some samples if you wish, so you can see what
I mean.
Also, you can get fancy, as the biot has a notch at the base of the
triangle taper... where you stripped it from the feather's quill.
Well, if you wrap the triangle fiber piece (called a biot) with the
notch on one side versus the other, you can make a raised fuzzy
divider of the segmentation, or you can just cover over it and have
darker edging but no raised fuzzy edge. Again, it's easier to show it
than it is to explain it... if this doesn't make sense, feel free to
ask me about it. :) I love biot bodies for my dry spinners, and they
work well for nymph bodies, also, though I always add legs on these
for nymphs.
Anyhow, that should be a start for ideas. OH! before using ANY
road-kill / molted feathers from the park, etc... wash them in normal
dish soap. Usually this removes most possible "bugs"(though there are
numerous better ways to get rid of stuff, like freezing / microwaving,
etc), but at a very least, it cleans them up. Besides that, when
rinsed of the soap and air- dried, the feathers often look better than
they did when you started with them.
Just my 2 cents worth of advice... Good luck and tight lines,
Pete Gramp
