Soft Hackle

[AFHokie]

Quick question for all you tiers out there. I am new to tying, been tying since Christmas but not a ton. Last night I tried tying up a couple Bitch Creeks. All went well until the hackle. I was using grizzly hackle out of a 'bugger pack' of a non-premium brand. When I began to wrap i found it was extremely dense and the fibers clumped together a lot. This is the first time using soft hackle like this and my dry hackle is Whiting Farms so it works great. Is this clumping due to lower quality of the hackle? Does soft hackle normally do this? Can I do anything to make it better? What I ended up doing was cut all the fibers from one side of the hackle and use a needle to seperate the clumps of fibers. It's not the prettiest but it'll do. I've also seen several pictures of tying steps for wet flies and the hackles seem to have been pulled back so the fibers are standing at 90 degrees to the stem, will that help/is that necessary for this type of hackling?

Thanks
Ken

[the icon]

Ken, the conventional wisdom is that for wet flies you want that soft webby hackle because it gives the fly more movement and a more natural look. That will hold true in slower water but if you are going to fish fast pocket water you should use stiff hackle. This keeps the hackle from clinging to the body of the fly. That is why the hair hackled Potts flies were so popular in Montana for so many years on rivers like the Madison. Rather than cut your hackle off on those bitch creeks, leave it there. After a few casts it won't stick together and will look good when the fly is drifting.
mike

[AFHokie]

Thanks icon. The next ones I do I will leave it and let the fish decide. As we all know, what we think looks good is often quite different from what the fish think looks good.