Moulting alert!! Save fly tie money now!

The autumn is forthcoming. This week I noticed the first mushrooms. In this case a big Giant Puffball. Besides mushrooms, autumn stands for falling leaves AND more important to a fly tyer: the moulting period of birds! Beside the white of the puffball, the banks showed a lot of white from the feathers of swanns.

This triggered my annual raid to the local childrens farm! Its autumn heaven for the budget fly tyer. You can find our most wanted living fly feather producers like chickens, partridges, peacock, guinea fowl. I was a bit early and only found a lot of my favourite guinea fowl feathers.

There fluff is excellent for shucks because its ultra agile under water. It gives live to flies and can trigger strikes!. Extra bonus is that these feathers are highly UV reflective (The New Scientific Angling, Trout and Ultraviolet Vision by Reed F. Curry).

So plan a budget trip with a bin bag to a childrens farm. And be early before the keepers have cleared all the feathers!