interviews

Henry Hoffman Interview

By Scott Richmond

Used any small, imitative flies lately? If so, thank Henry Hoffman, the man who revolutionized modern fly tying with his Super Grizzly hackles.

n the last 25 years, there have been many technological advances in the world of fly fishing: graphite rods, sinking lines, disk drag reels, pontoon boats, chickens.

Chickens? Unless you took up fly fishing more than 20 years ago, you may not realize how much flies have changed. In the past, few anglers used imitative patterns. One of the chief reasons was that they could rarely get suitable fly tying materials. Small, high quality feathers were not available in volume.

Then Henry Hoffman began breeding chickens specifically for fly tying feathers. Through years of careful genetic selection, Henry developed a stock of birds that produced wonderful tying materials . . . and revolutionized fly tying and fly fishing.

This month, Westfly talks to Henry about chickens, fly tying, and how to pick good tying materials.

When did you get into the business of raising chickens for fly tying feathers?

I moved to Oregon in early 1961 and was going to college, logging, longshoring--and tying flies for Poulsen's in Portland. We were using imported hackles from India, and the quality was very poor. In 1965 I was at the Livestock Show in Portland and saw a couple of Bantam Grizzly chickens that had good feathers for tying, so I bought a breeding pair for $5.

Were they blue-ribbon chickens?

Not a bit. People who raise chickens for livestock shows want a completely different kind of bird than you'd want for tying flies. In fact, the people who had show chickens didn't like fly tyers; if you wanted a chicken, you never said what you were going to do with it! After that, I bought some other Bantams from the mid-west so I'd have genetic diversity.

Why Bantams? I used to keep some Barred Rocks for eggs. It's a similar kind of grizzly hackle, and it seems like a bigger bird would yield more feathers.

Barred Rocks are good birds for meat and eggs, but they eat four times what Bantams eat, so they were too expensive to raise for feathers at that time--a good grizzly neck sold for only $7--and you couldn't get much hackle smaller than a size 12 dry fly.

Size 12 was about the smallest? There aren't very many aquatic insects that big. How could you tie imitative flies without smaller hackle?

At that time people didn't tie imitative patterns like they do today. Nymphs were rarely used, and very few people fished lakes with flies. Most fly anglers wanted dry flies for rivers and weren't much interested in anything else.

Did you continue to tie after you got your chickens?

I tied commercially for Randall Kaufmann and Dennis Black. Randall's fly shop, Kaufmann's Streamborn, is now one of the country's premiere fly shops, and Dennis went on to start Umpqua Feather Merchants.

What flies did you tie the most?

I tied a lot of Adams. The Adams was the most popular dry fly at the time. As you know, the pattern uses grizzly hackle and brown hackle wound together. So I raised chickens for grizzly hackle, brown hackle, and natural blue dun. I kept breeding for smaller and smaller feathers, which allowed us to tie smaller and more imitative dry flies.

Later I also raised white chickens because their feathers could be dyed. There's a genetic link between color and quality. In time I learned what colors worked best as natural colors, and which worked best as dyed. For instance, I could get better blue dun hackles by dying feathers from white chickens than I could get from chickens with natural blue dun feathers.

How many birds did you have?

The most I had was 3,350 roosters and 800-900 hens. The hens were for reproducing, and the roosters were for feathers. I could have raised more birds, but having fewer gave me time to examine each one more carefully to find the best breeders.

What makes a good tying feather? What should a buyer look for?

First, look at the quill, the stem of the feather. It should be thin, not tapered. The worst feathers have a quill that is too thick. It turns and twists on the hook, so the barbs lay flat instead of sticking up like they ought to. Another problem is a quill that has too much taper; it will be weak and break off. Quills that have too much taper can be strong for about two-thirds of their length, but they get too thin at the tips. This can be a problem with some of the recent "genetic" hackles.

Something else to watch out for is a quill that's too hard. That's why I test a quill by pressing my thumbnail into it; the quill should depress and not feel hard. Another thing to look at is the shape of the quill. It should be round; square or triangular quills usually won't wrap well on a hook. Although, if a quill is the wrong shape it will still turn fairly well on the hook if it is thin enough and soft enough.

Of course, the hackle needs to the right size, too.

What do you look for there?

You want to buy a neck that has lots of small feathers. That's what you're paying for: small, quality feathers. Feel the neck when it's still in the package. It should feel "cushiony." That means there are several layers of feathers. You should have small feathers far down the neck. That's because the feather track is wider the farther down you go. So if there are small feathers farther down, you get more usable hackle. A top grade neck has lots of feathers that are suitable for size 16, 18, 20, even 22 dry flies.

What about saddle hackles?

The neck--or cape--come from the backside of the chicken, starting near the head, and has the smallest feathers. The saddle comes from farther down the back. On the saddle, the feathers are long, but not as small. A good saddle should have many long feathers of consistent size, and thin quills with almost no taper. You should be able to tie down to a size 14 dry fly with a good saddle.

In the past, you seldom got a good neck and a good saddle from the same chicken. It took me until 1973 to get a decent rooster saddle. It had seven inch feathers down to size 12. I was very excited. But today that wouldn't even qualify as a grade 3 saddle. The most common sizes on our current saddles are size 14 and size 16.

By 1985 we started getting some roosters with both grade 1 necks and grade 1 saddles.

What about hen feathers?

Hen feathers have a round shape, unlike the "pointy" feathers on a rooster. Also, hen feathers have more "web"--more barbules. The barb is the part of the feather that sticks straight out from the quill, and the barbule is a little piece that sticks out from the barb. A lot of writers have gotten those terms mixed up. If a feather has more barbules, it will soak up water faster. On an upright wing the feather isn't in contact with the water, so a hen feather works well there. Hen feathers are also used in nymphs because they move well in the water and it doesn't matter if they get wet.

I understand you've been using another type of feather, "Chickabou," for wet flies.

Yes. Originally, marabou feathers came from the marabou stork, an African bird. The feathers were long and webby, and they worked well in nymph patterns. But the bird is now endangered, so "marabou" comes from turkey feathers; they're naturally white, then they're dyed different colors. But turkey feathers are longer than chicken feathers, so marabou doesn't work as well for smaller sizes of flies. That's why I use "chickabou," which is marabou-like feathers from the breast, knees, and thighs of a chicken. I used to just throw that part away, but now there's a use for it.

Why didn't people discover that earlier?

Because they fished dry flies in rivers. It's only recently that nymphs have come into vogue, and fly fishing on lakes is also a recent phenomenon. Because there's no current in a lake, you need a material that has more built-in action. On smaller, more imitative flies, chickabou is great material.

Are you still in the business of raising chickens for feathers?

I sold my business to Whiting Farms in 1989. I kept some birds for myself until 1995, and I sell feathers directly to tyers at sportsman shows and fly tying expos.

That sounds like a good opportunity for fly tyers to pick up some great material! Thank you for talking to Westfly.

Scott Richmond is Westfly's creator and Executive Director. He is the author of eight books on Oregon fly fishing, including Fishing Oregon's Deschutes River (second edition).

Uploaded 02/11/1999.

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