Gun to my head and I am forced to use only one material for the rest of my fly tying life (suspend your disbelief for a second...), I choose bucktail. Without question, bucktail is my favorite fly tying material for streamers - from inch and a half bucktail streamers like the Thunder Creek Minnows or Mickey Finns to massive musky flies. Bucktail is an incredibly versatile tying material that is used to create streamer tails, "wings", and heads. Because bucktails - well, the part most of us use - are white, they take dye very well and are available in a huge range of colors.
Being a natural material, and unlike chicken feathers that are (mostly) grown specifically for fly tying, bucktails are taken from wild animals and thus are quite variable. And as you will see below, each bucktail changes in its characteristics as you move from the tip to the base of the bucktail. While bucktails are so versatile, I will say that they are harder to learn how to use compared to many other materials. Of course, the best way to see this is to try it for yourself. Cut of a small bit of bucktail - maybe 30 fibers from different bucktails and regions on the same bucktail and see how they behave at the same thread tension. Then start playing around with thread tension and see how they respond. You'll see a ton of variability in how bucktail flares, or does not flare.
Probably the first thing to learn about bucktail - and what makes it so versatile - is that a tail has three rather distinct regions / types of hair. Dividing the tail approximately in thirds, the top third has hair that tends to be straighter, less "kinky", and less hollow. This is the part of the bucktail that those tying Clouser Deep Minnows most typically covet and use up most quickly. Typically, deer hair with more kinkiness is hollower which means it will flare more with the same amount of thread pressure. Conversely, deer hair with less kink to it is less hollow will flare less and will be less buoyant. The middle third is intermediate in terms of hollowness and flare, and for many tyers, this is the Goldilocks zone. Lastly, the bottom (base) is the most hollow and kink and flares the most. The base useful for applications where you want to create the illusion of bulk while adding a minimal amount of material to the fly. And as musky fly tyers will tell you, the back of the bucktail is just as useful as are the side fibers most tyers are using. Even if you are not a musky fly tyer, save them for tying Mangrove Muddlers, one of my favorite "I don't care if I lose it" flies.
The bucktail deceiver is a wonderfully simple two material fly - bucktail and a bit of flash - that really shows the versatility of bucktail. There is, however, a lot of thought that goes into creating this "simple" fly, in large part because bucktail is a natural material and each one is different. Paul Monaghan ties a bucktail deceiver above and talks about the qualities of bucktail he is looking for. As he states, as he gets closer to the head of the tail, he selects hair from closer to the base of a bucktail. He wants hair that is a little more hollow for the head so it flares a bit more and gives a bit more bulk to the head.
Advantages of Bucktail
Relatively inexpensive. The highest of quality bucktails with the greatest length sell from $10 to maybe $25 on the high end but most of the time you will find them from $10 to $15. Unless you are tying flies for Northern Pike and Musky, sub-$10 tails will have plenty of length for most trout and bass streamers. And even at $15 or more for ultra-premium bucktails with 5+ inch fiber lengths, you will get so many flies out of one bucktail that the cost per fly is relatively low. If you are tying Clousers and more standard sized bass and trout flies, you can buy bucktails for $10 or less. (I wrote a fair bit about bucktails for Clouser Deep Minnows previously.)
Versatility. As mentioned in the first paragraph, bucktails are used for pretty much every part of a streamer except for the eyes. This is because along the bucktail, its properties change. You saw this in the Paul Monaghan bucktail deceiver (watch the video!) and all the other videos talk about this in their own way. Once you learn more about bucktails, you will figure out how to select tails for the type of flies you tie most of the time.
Stiffness / Movement Relationship. To me, bucktails have the near perfect combination of stiffness to prevent hook fouling but their movement in the water - particularly when tied sparsely enough - is quite fantastic. Even on streamers that are heavy on synthetics, I like bucktail as the tail because it helps prevent less stiff synthetics from fouling on the hook. A classic application of this is the Murdich Minnow where bucktail provides a platform for the Flashabou and prevents it from fouling the hook on the cast.
The tail on many larger streamers serves as "rudder" that helps the fly track and bucktail does that better than any other material.
Color choice. As mentioned above, bucktails take dye extremely well and you can find them in about a bazillion colors from very natural to neon pinks and purples and everything in-between. I like many of the pastel colors which are a bit more muted in tone. I also have a few that are tip dyed which I think are pretty cool and give your fly a little bit different look. By far my most used color is the natural white. Because of the variability in tails, I have at least half a dozen white tails right now.
What about Faux Bucktail? Faux Bucktail is, at best, a one note bucktail "substitute". I put substitute in quotes because it is a substitute in the same way that "Near Beer" is a substitute for beer. It hits a note or two but it lacks the punch of a bucktail. Faux Bucktail looks great but lacks many of the qualities of real bucktail - most notably, it lacks the movement in the water and the hollowness of real bucktail. It acts most similar to the tip hair of a bucktail. I have tried it on a number of applications and have only found one application where where it compares somewhat equally to real bucktail. It does not have the movement of real bucktail in either a Clouser Deep Minnow, a standard bucktail fly or a Thunder Creek Minnow, or in flies like bucktail deceivers or related predator flies. It should not be looked at as a bucktail substitute except in the rarest of applications.
Where I do find it to be useful is in a rudder-style tail on large flies as it is stiff and has a great length to it. A friend uses it on his "Musky Murdich Minnows" and that is a great application for Faux Bucktail, maybe the only great application of Faux Bucktail. There are few other flies I see it as very advantageous but if you are like me and need to try fly tying materials for yourself, give it a try. At worst, you're out a few dollars.
Additional bucktail videos
Buying Bucktail
Because bucktail is a natural material, I want to see it before I buy it. To me, this is even more vital than it is for buying hackle which these days, you have a pretty good idea exactly what you are buying. "Back in the day" hackle varied so much that tyers would dig through tons of capes to find the one they like (some still do...) but if I am buying "genetic hackle" today, I am almost certainly getting good stuff. And if I am buying it from a good, knowledgeable source, they have accurately sized it for me. For bucktail, there are more variables.
What I am looking for in a bucktail are:
Clean and without smell. If bucktails are not fully cleaned and cured, they can rot and have an off smell. You can clean this with some alcohol but you should not have to.
Tails that are are straight. If not properly handled when processed, the "leather" of bucktails can be kinked rather than straight. Likewise, part of the tail can have fibers that are twisted.
Fiber length. You will pay a premium for the longest of fibers - which you may have to pay if you are tying musky flies. However, if you are tying bass or trout sized streamers, save yourself some money and buy tails with shorter fibers. Because each fiber tends to get more hollow near their base, matching length to application helps you tie better flies.
Kinkiness. This really depends upon what flies you plan to tie but I have some tails that have fairly straight, non-hollow fibers for nearly the top half of the fly and others where all the but very tip of the tail is relatively hollow and kinky.
Fiber Thickness / Softness. Typically, I like hairs that are not too thick in diameter that have a nice softness to them. However, there are applications for the finer, often really soft tails as there are for the tails with thicker and hollower fibers.
As mentioned above, the costs of bucktails varies pretty significantly. Using Musky Fool as a source of information, bucktails range from $10 to over $20 (I would certainly want to see a $20-25 bucktail before buying one!). For $10, you will get a great bucktail for most bucktail patterns and if you are tying smaller flies, these tails are not only more cost effective but better than the more expensive tails. Where on the bucktail the fibers you use has a huge effect on how it will flare. If you want to tie larger flies, I would prefer to handle the tails myself or buy them from a place I know and trust. Fortunately for me, Musky Fool is on the way home to see family and I try to stop in once in a while to search for bucktails.
Buying Bucktail Links
A Selection of Bucktail Flies
The diversity of flies that can be tied with bucktail - and not much else - is pretty huge. I will certainly not cover every fly but I'll try to highlight those that primarily made from bucktail and where the shape and movement of the pattern is due to bucktail. Certainly there are a number of flies that are largely made of synthetic materials but have a tail made of bucktail (IMHO, there is no better streamer tail material than bucktail.).
I am going to start simple and work towards the more complex.
Among the simplest of bucktail flies are those like the previously mentioned Mickey Finn and other simple bucktail flies like the Blacknose Dace, John Gierach's Little Brown Trout, Jim's Smelt, and many others. And as I had written about previously, the Thunder Creek Minnow and many Emerald Shiner (Notropis atherinoides) imitations are tied with bucktail and maybe a little flash. And most Clouser Deep Minnows are tied with only bucktail and a bit of flash - and of course, dumbbell eyes.
Lefty's Deceiver is feathers, bucktail, and a little flash and like the Clouser Deep Minnow, is in Ian Whitelaw's book, The History of Fly-Fishing in Fifty Flies. Lefty Kreh came up with this fly in the late 1950's to be a versatile pattern that could imitate a wide variety of baitfishes. Originally a saltwater fly, the deceiver has become a favorite freshwater fly. And like so many great patterns, it has evolved into a number of similar forms.
The Half and Half - half Clouser / half deceiver - is one such variation, a collaboration between Kreh and Clouser. Others - like the bucktail deceiver near the start of this post are more modern variations. Two of my favorite variations are the flatwing streamer and bulkhead deceiver.
Flatwing streamer were created for saltwater but I have used them in freshwater for both trout and warmwater species. It is, as the name suggests, a fly with a flat (horizontally) wing. This arrangement of the saddle feathers allows the "wing" of the streamer to have a unique movement. You have to love a fly where the tyer tells you it may look like Hell now but don't worry, we'll fix that! And then he does. Looking at the fly, it is essentially a deceiver with a different "wing" and use of feathers.
What I love about the bulkhead deceiver is that is it versatile and relatively simple to tie. You can add as much or as little flash as you'd like. The pattern ties well fairly small - maybe 2-3 inches in total length but excels as a 4 to 7 inch fly, in my experiences. The length of the fly is limited by the length of hair you have to create the tail. And it can be tied much larger on shanks and/or multiple hooks. These are easily sized up to musky-sized flies. Below in the links are several other versions / variations on the bulkhead deceiver.
Brad Bohen's Hangtime Optic Minnow is another relatively simple pattern that is, in many ways, a "scaled up" deceiver. It is bucktail, feathers, and flash - as so many musky flies are.
Brad Bohen's Buford, probably one of the most effective and versatile musky flies, takes from a number of these patterns along with the Dahlberg Diver. It is a great water pushing fly best fished on a sinking (intermediate) line. The head is created from the backside of a bucktail. As mentioned above, many that tie musky fly tyers covet the back of the bucktails as much as they do the underside (white or dyed on white) portion of the bucktail. Look for a future post on the Buford.
The musky glider above is another largely bucktail fly that allows for a good bit of bulk without losing movement and castability.
As mentioned above, I put these in order of ease of fly tying - this one comes down the list in large part because it requires specialized equipment to make the bucktail dubbing brush.
Blane Chocklett's Game Changer platform is a great - but hugely time consuming - method to tie realistic baitfishes. Tyers have used different materials and figured out ways to scale it both up and down. I have seen game changers not much larger than an inch and others that are as large as pretty much any musky fly I've seen. The bucktail game changer is a variation that is used to create a huge fly with that "game changer profile". For another option, Marlon Price ties his version of the bucktail game changer for Musky Town.
Bob Popovics' BEAST Fleye provides a method to tie gigantic, lightweight streamers with a realistic body taper on a single hook. Bob Popovics is a New Jersey fly angler that is best known for his unique saltwater patterns like the beast fleye, surf candy, siliclones, and other "Fleyes" that are in his books, Pop Fleyes and Fleye Design. I put the beast fleye last because while it is just bucktail (you can add a bit of flash), getting the body taper correct and tying the extended body off the vise is certainly quite an advanced tying technique.
The Wrap-Up
As I look around the interwebs, I see many of the best fly tyers in the world are masters of bucktail, a truly North American material. I think this is because how versatile the material is and how creative you can get with bucktail. Add some feathers and a bit of flash and now you have an even more versatile set of materials. I feel like I have barely scratched the surface in this post and can - and probably will - dig deeper into tying with bucktails.
For now, I think that is enough for one post and it certainly gives you plenty to think about. In the comments, let me know what flies you tie with bucktail.
Links to Fly Tying Videos and Playlists
Previous The Scientific Fly Angler Posts
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What a great summary. I agree 100% on the Faux Bucktail - it's great tail/rudder for bigger flies. Here is is in a pair of "Mini Fauxfords" but it's much easier to see in the top black and pink one.