It is with great excitement that I introduce the most misunderstood feather in all of fly tying. Emu is the first new hackle in over a century. Emu flies are at the cutting edge of modern fly fishing.

Our ideas of what a dry fly looks like, and how it should be constructed, are wholly reliant upon available materials. A new hackle, with new physical properties, provides altogether new possibilities. Taking together the starred flair, flotation of the barbules, and the organized light-pattern they create, emu hackles form the beginning of a new dry fly paradigm. As Vincent Marinaro wrote: “When more is added to the store of knowledge, the perceptions must be altered to conform accordingly.” (p. 65, Marinaro 1950).

Emu hackle is the most meaningful addition to the tyer’s chest of materials in a generation. Not since the stiff hackles of chalk stream nobility traveled to the New World, has the tyer had a new option of hackle.

Emu is a disguised hackle no longer. It is a Goldilocks in the pantheon of our tying hackles. The stripped feather is like a new instrument in the hands of an old musician. With it, the tyer may compose new melodies with which to charm his cherished trout.

Emu is sometimes mistakenly classified as a “Bugger hackle” or streamer feather. Emu does not excel at either of those tasks. These and other miss- characterizations usually result from the deceptive size of the feathers. This promotes the idea that emu is either too big for trout flies, or too big for small trout flies. Small emu feathers abound. Simple collared emu flies can be comfortably tied down to size 18 or 20, depending on hook shape.

In the absence of an authoritative wrapping technique, emu continues to slip under the radar of trouters and authors alike. Since Quigley's article in 2005, not a single trout book or magazine references emu.

Since 2012 I have been developing the transformative techniques that turn this curious feather into a masterful hackle.

The Fly Tyer magazine article left out important content from the original manuscript. Not to worry, the book is coming!

Thanks to tremendous reader interest and inquiries, I have decided to write the first-and-only book of its kind, “Epoch of Emu." The plague has thrown a wrench into the timeline. The book is expected to be available next autumn.

I will defer to our common fly tying lexicon when referring to parts of the feather. The vain or rahcis we know as the stem. The barb or primary barb, I will refer to as the fiber. And the secondary barbs, I will call barbules.

Note that the barbules are sensitive to impurities. If they dry matted, a rinse with clean water and a puff of air will restore them.

Even though the feather is very long, it should be thought of, and treated as three smaller discrete feathers.

Here the fly is submerged and I am pulling it up. As the taper decreases, flexibility increases. The proximal portion of fibers are stiffer than rooster. Unlike partridge, emu will never collapse around the body of the fly.



The bead is used to simulate a current. Here the fly is dropping. This illustrates how the fibers bend in a joint-like manner. This flexing motion is more realistic than the uniform movements of other soft hackles.



Most impressively, after being bobbed up and down repeatedly for several minutes, you can still see a few micro bubbles. It cannot be understated that when it comes to trapping air, emu is a game changer.



The camera is pointing upward at approximately 45 degrees. This is the initial light-pattern after the fly lands. Correctly sized, soft fibers allow symmetricals to fall delicately to the surface. Amazing light-patterns like this are why symmetricals entice strikes shortly after landing.

A dun does not sit on the water’s surface, he it stands on it. The trout does not see the insect’s body at the edge of the window. He sees a light-pattern, and is triggered to rise by “feet in the film.”



“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” You can see that the fibers, not the foam is floating the fly. They are not just floating it, they are pulling half of the hook completely out of the water. With a medium-to-heavy wrapping of medium-to-soft fibers, emu barbules work wonders at the surface.




This will be the initial appearance of a symmetrical tied with the transitional fibers. It looks exactly like an emerger breaking through the surface. Although the fly is now flush in the film, there is still small pockets of air around the wing post., exactly like the real thing.



To get started, you will need at least three bags and 15 minutes to sort them by size, and remove the unusable, sometimes ridiculous feathers. The notion of pulling three from a bag to find the right one is unrealistic. About a quarter of each bag will consist of desirably sized hackles. Expect to discard a third or more of each package.



No nonsense Ultra Sheer are the thinnest and strongest stockings that I have found. The smaller sized nylons tend to have better knitting than larger sizes.

An elastic post prevents the stem from sliding up. It will also stay in contact with the stem, providing support like a shock absorber. Elasticity is the most import feature of a good wing post for parachuted emu.