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source for better marabou?

8K views 21 replies 15 participants last post by  JonT 
#1 ·
Hi all, I'm looking for a source for marabou that is A: dye fast and won't bleed, and B:has nice wispy barbs that will move well in the water and thin stems suitable for palmering. I tie a lot of articulated marabou jobs for winter Steelhead, but inevitably they all end up in shades of grey. Also a lot of material gets relegated to marabou trout leaches as it's worthless for wrapping. If anyone has a line on some premium stuff I'd sure appreciate it. Thanks--AJ
 
#2 ·
Lots ...

Not sure where you are getting your stuff .....

Brands that I use such as Fish Hunter and Hairline seem to have lasting dye. There can be some variation in color from lot to lot .. I've never had marabou bleach out like you describe. I've seen some Rhea do so however.

Marabou can be very inconsistent ... some have thick stems ... some are so bound up at the base with the string ... the color doesn't seem to penetrate ... or the shaft covering keeps the dye out. Or the marabou was of poor quality to begin with.

The best is to go to your local shop and sort through them yourself.
The next best is to form a relationship with shop such as those that sponsor here and give them a call ... no shop wants an unhappy customer. Tell them what you are looking for and they will do their best to furnish you with what you want. I don't ever expect every feather in a bag to be thin stemmed ... fully colored ... and unflawed. I think if 70% of the bag is good then I hit the jackpot ... often I get less than that. If the stems are thick and the feather is otherwise ok. Then use the plumes in a dubbing loop. Then you can use some of the otherwise unusable feathers.

Just some thoughts ...

Steve
 
#5 · (Edited)
Not sure where you are getting your stuff .....

Brands that I use such as Fish Hunter and Hairline seem to have lasting dye. There can be some variation in color from lot to lot .. I've never had marabou bleach out like you describe. I've seen some Rhea do so however.

Marabou can be very inconsistent ... some have thick stems ... some are so bound up at the base with the string ... the color doesn't seem to penetrate ... or the shaft covering keeps the dye out. Or the marabou was of poor quality to begin with.

The best is to go to your local shop and sort through them yourself.
The next best is to form a relationship with shop such as those that sponsor here and give them a call ... no shop wants an unhappy customer. Tell them what you are looking for and they will do their best to furnish you with what you want. I don't ever expect every feather in a bag to be thin stemmed ... fully colored ... and unflawed. I think if 70% of the bag is good then I hit the jackpot ... often I get less than that. If the stems are thick and the feather is otherwise ok. Then use the plumes in a dubbing loop. Then you can use some of the otherwise unusable feathers.

Just some thoughts ...

Steve
I've had black dyed marabou bleed from a couple of suppliers. I finally think I found some that won't bleed because my hands stayed clean while tying with it. I got it from Jack Gartside.
 
#6 ·
Thanks for the info. Black is the worst! I have started soaking it, then pressing it between paper towels, and finally hanging it to dry. Eliminates most of the bleeding.

Hey Steve, if you try the wetting trick with black, you might want to do the paper towel thing with individual feathers. Very frustrating to have a difficult fly bleed shortly after tying!
 
#7 ·
I don't have a source. Thank goodness I bought a bunch when I did! I am however out of black. I am posting just to show you the quality that I like. And if anyone has this quality in well dyed black I would love to know. Jack Cook had some that was close at one time.
Also,the photo is of my all time favorite marabou feathers that I use for tails[hackled] of intruders when I want a bright fly.A good bright fly I use sometimes is this feather at rear and a chartreuse marabou hackled in front of it. The feather part of this fly is roughly 4" x 4".In real life the tips are brighter red.I often have trouble getting accurate colors with this program for photos.
I don't want feathers tied together.I want them selected one at a time and I use them like I would use any good BEP,Rhea or whatever and I hackle them so that they are 90 deg to the shank and they breath and pulse like a squid ,prawn,etc.
Beau
 

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#8 ·
Thanks for all the replies and thoughts. Black IS definitely the worst, and basically what happens is the black dye gets on everything else:mad: I've used the Hareline brand and it's generally pretty good apart from the dye issue. As per Riverborns advice, I may end up pre-soaking and pressing the black stuff before use. Beau, that picture you put up is good looking stuff! Sounds like we tie in a similar fashion. I wrap/palmer the marabou around the hook shank or tube. Really fluffly when its dry, but in the water it just pulses and wiggles, and generally looks sexy as hell! As a bonus it weighs almost nothing. Anyways, thanks again folks--AJ
 
#9 ·
I can tell when I am working with esp black marabou ... my fingers get stained a bit. But I've never had a problem with putting a fly in the water and visibly seeing the color leach out. The fly color looks the same after I fish them. I'm sure prewashing them and drying them would decrease the finger staining, but I think I would just get distressed seeing the color on the paper towel. (like I did when I stripped the rhea after soaking it and dried it on paper towels) There are many different ways and types of dyes to use. I've done pretty well with hareline and fishhunter. The quality of the plumes certainly can very. I've noticed some offerings of "extra-select" spey marabou, etc ... and although it costs more ... there are generally more usuable feathers.

It is a joy to find marabou such as that illustrated by Beau.

Happy Hunting.

Steve
 
#11 ·
AJ,

I've definitely had the problem of stems that don't wrap very well, but have not had much trouble with bleeding. I have done the brand searching and nothing I've found is consistently good as far as stem thickness, but I have settled on "The Pro's Choice" ("Fish Hunter") that I find at the local Joe's store in Portland (OR). I open and examine every package (in the store) for stem quality and buy only the better of what I find. I still have to grade every package once at my tying table, into 3-4 levels, with the finer stems being 1 and so forth. Feathers with the largest stems will get the barbules pulled off and spun in a dubbing loop and wrapped, or tied on directly.

Rick
 
#12 ·
Fine-stemmed marabou is and has been always a problem with plumes with the longer barbules for use in marabou spiders and such. And since avian flu hit the Chinese and Southeast Asian turkey growers hard a few years ago, it has been increasing difficult to get good, finer-stemmed marabou that is 4"-5" long. We have always had to go through the marabou and "cull" it for the feathers that are suitable for marabou spiders and such, unfortunately, the last 5 years of so we've had to cull out a lot more of it.

Black will almost always have some "bleed" out on your fingers and hands when you tie with it. This is due to having to use twice as much dye as normal when dying black. And when dying commercial quantities of marabou, not all the excess dye is rinsed out in the commercial vat process. It isn't that the black dyed marabou isn't colorfast, it is simply a bit of the excess dye coming out. Of course, this is provided you are getting your marabou from a fly tying supplier or fly shop that is carrying marabou from a fly tying supplier.

If you get marabou at the local craft shop or from one of the large craft supply companies, it will not have been dyed with a colorfast when wet, acid dye and the color will bleed out when wet. Many have found this out the hard way. Just because the craft store's marabou is cheaper, it isn't a bargain because of the lack of colorfastness when wet and the number of feathers with thick stems. However, if you get strung white 4"-5" marabou by the pound from one of the large craft supply houses and dye it yourself with a good acid dye (Jacquard's, Wash Fast, Kiton, Fly Dye, Orco) in 1 oz or so batches, you can have good marabou that is colorfast when wet. Of course, a pound of marabou is a lot of marabou (it pretty much fills up a waste paper sized garbage liner) and you will also have to buy the acid dyes, Synthrapol, and do the dying.

This is why for nearly all tyers, it is better to get your marabou from a fly shop because they get theirs from fly tying suppliers.
 
#14 ·
I hate to say this and hope folks don't take it as me being mean-spirited, but there is no such thing as "spey marabou". This is simply a marketing ploy designed to get a tyer to spend more money for the same product someone else sells as fine-stemmed 4"-6" marabou.

As I said earlier in this thread, look for marabou with a fine-stem and fiber length long enough for your needs. And buy it by the once whenever possible because it is a much better buy that way than by the 1/4 or 1/8 oz packages I've seen all over the place. Plus, buying it by the once insures you don't run out at a most inopportune time.
 
#15 ·
If you are like me, and have to buy a lot of stuff online, you obviously can't actually see the fibers of the feathers you are buying like in a shop. You have to rely on photos and words, so searching for "spey marabou" specifically gets me past all the wooly bugger blood quills. I've bought "spey marabou" that is such a higher quality than blood quills for palmering, and it didn't drain my wallet (he did mention "thin stems suitable for palmering").

I think it's a little paranoid to call it a marketing ploy. I like these - waterswest. com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=67]Spey Marabou - $3.95
 
#16 ·
For me regular marabou better then spey msrabou. I just to use only spey marabou but figured out it a waiste. The stem are thick so you get the same amount of thin stem as in blood quills. A good blood quill you can wrap the full feather or the spey stuff maybe half of it? Then u have a quill body starting to form lol

Just part of them game is hunting materials
 
#17 ·
JonT,

I know Dave Steinbaugh (the owner of Waters West in Port Angeles) rather well and I know why he labels some of his marabou 'spey marabou'. Dave buys marabou by the pound and dyes a lot of it himself. He started to call some of it 'spey marabou' to distinguish it from blood marabou that is normally used for WOOLLEY BUGGERS. For Dave, it was a way to point folks to the small-stemmed longer marabou that is suitable for marabou spiders. And as such, it is still marketing.

My problem with Dave (or other calling it spey marabou) is that it gives people a false impression that this is what it used to tie spey flies or that it is "real spey hackle". Neither of these are true and that is why I have a problem with calling it this. I'd have the same problem is folks started calling the longer fibered schlappen "spey schlappen".
 
#21 ·
As far as I know, the stuff we call marabou comes from two sources - turkeys and geese. I prefer the turkey; I have often seen it sold as "spey marabou.". Yes, it has a thicker stem, but the whole feather is much longer than all but the longest super grade goose. The upper portion of the average turkey plume (where the stem is suitably thin) will wrap 4 or 5 turns; when evenly spaced, they're enough to cover the size 1.5 AJ's I tie on and then some. I should note that I always split the stems and strip one side. I also find that the turkey generally isn't as webby as the goose. I like the look.

I bought great heaping wads of the stuff from Jack Cook awhile back. Great stuff, extremely color fast. Never going to use it all, since I have started to favor coque tails and burned goose shoulder. If you'd like to work an exchange for some, I have it in grey, black, white, and red.
 
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