 Welcome back to the channel everybody, I've had some requests in the comments during my fly fishing videos that I should start tying my own flies. And that is exactly what we're going to be doing today. But we're not just going to be tying any old fly. We're going to be tying some flies and trying to catch some fish using our very own chickens. That's right y'all. This is Colonel Sanders right here. He is my main man inside of the roost. He's my only rooster now. And I've often thought some of these feathers are so pretty on these chickens. They'd be great for like tying some jigs or some flies or something that I've never actually tried. So we'll let him go. He's a little perturbed right now. Did you guys know that there are different types of feathers on chickens? I didn't actually know this or discover this until I started having my own flocks of chickens and was having to figure out if they're roosters or hens at a young age. And you start to figure that out as they develop their adult feathers. And there's actually a market for chicken feathers for tying flies. And you can get them in hen feathers and rooster feathers. And rooster feathers are better for tying dry flies, they're more buoyant basically. And some of the hen feathers, they're softer, they're made for sitting on eggs and things like that. So there's different applications. You also have hackle feathers, you have saddle feathers, there's different types of feathers on the chickens. So I thought we would take some of the chicken feathers that we have here and I've got a trout fishing trip that I'm leaving on tomorrow. I've been making some flies on my own with some other material. I thought we would take a few from our chicken flock here, make some flies and see if we could catch some trout with them. So first thing we got to do obviously is get some feathers. First off, let me update you on the flock. Basically last spring we had some new chickens. I have a broody hen, she's still broody right now. You guys are looking for broody hens. Look no further than this little fluff ball right here. This is called a frizzle chicken. She is my only hen that is a frizzle and my goodness, she goes broody all the time. And right now she should be sitting on some eggs. So I literally have to come in here throughout the day or Stephanie and I have to pull her off eggs all the time. This is what's really cool about our new chickens that we hatched in the spring, they're already starting to lay eggs. I'm going to go ahead and take those inside because if you guys don't know, the fertilization process, the incubation process, it's pretty quick with a chicken and if she's sitting on those eggs for more than, I don't know, a day basically, you go to make an omelet and you're going to find some little chicken development in your omelet. So no, I'm not going to pluck my chickens dry. I may extract a hackle feather or two off of Colonel Sanders, but I think we've got everything that we need just laying on the ground and in these nesting boxes. I actually had a chicken, a really pretty chicken. She's a blue colored, kind of a lavender color. And she was molting just about a month ago. And so she's got a lot of plumage feathers just laying around. And I'm really looking for the white colored feathers. Look at these feathers. These would make a pretty interesting little fly, I think. She's so soft, but I think we can just basically take these little feathers right here kind of out of the nesting box that have some of that real soft plumage and use that for making some wet flies. That right there, a lot of plumage on that one. A little bit of poop. We'll have to scrape that off there, but I think we can make that work. Yeah, there's some poop. There's some poop on there. A little extra dangler, so we'll have to work with. There's Peaches right there. She's going in. You going to lay an egg? You going to lay an egg? What kind of eggs are you going to lay, girl? This real soft plumage on their rear end is kind of what we're looking for to make some tails. Let me just say, I am a novice at this. Something I've always wanted to do. It's pretty cool to say I caught a fish on a fly that I made or any kind of lure really. I got a really crummy little fly tying kit, but I think it's going to do the job. And now we have our chicken feathers amongst some other things that I'm time flies with. So maybe you guys saw my fly fishing video up on the Taney Como. If not, I'll link to it. It was a really cool video of me and my dad fishing. Playing around, I already went ahead and I tied a little chicken feather jig. I guess you could call it chicken feather fly. And I just used some of that plumage, little gold head, and some of the hackle. And I wrapped it around there. All these flies that I'm going to tie are going to be small. We're fishing for pretty small fish. They typically will eat a pretty small fly, with the exception of the mega worm here. But I'm going to be nymphing, and this is something I want to sink under the water. So if I was going to tie some dry flies, which I may try, I would get some of those hackle feathers and give it a shot with that. My knowledge and skills on tying flies are very minimal. There's only so much I can do. So I got some of the hen feathers. I also managed to, Colonel Sanders let me take a couple of his. I just snipped them. I didn't even pluck them. I just snipped them. But you can tell that the hackle feathers, these are around his neck. They're a lot different than your hen feather. They're pointy. And this is how you know when you are trying to figure out, do I have a little rooster or do I have a little hen when they're coming of age? This is how you tell. Are their feathers pointy or are they round? I'm going to use this to maybe try to tie some sort of woolly bugger kind of thing. I don't really know. These are going to be a little messy. I'm going to zoom in on the camera around this so you guys can see exactly what I'm doing. But I'm sure many of you out there, tie your own fly. And you're going to be laughing at me and that is perfectly okay. It's just going to feel good when I catch a fish on the fly that I've made. That's all that matters. Okay. I went and changed my shirt so it would be too crazy of a background. You guys can see it a little better. But the first thing that we're going to do is put our hook in here. This is size number 10, a little nymph hook, barbless. Like using barbless hooks for trout. We're going to use a tungsten head right here. I'm going to go with just a classic nickel or silver. I'm going to put the barb through on the small opening of this bead. This is like incredibly hard for you guys to see. So now we got our little tungsten bead. That's a three millimeter, I do believe. And I guess the first thing that we need to do is just tie our base. I'm not really sure what you call it, but I've got some thread on a bobbin here. This is ultra thread white 140. I don't know. Some other threads, this one just seems to feel really good. It's a little more flossy. It's easier to tie. Oh, it's so good we are just messed up our first wrap. All right. So I'm just going to go down the hook shank, realize I'm doing this slow. But you got to keep in mind, I suck. Now for the tail, we're going to grab some plumage. This fly is going to be small so I don't need a ton of material to work with, but it is going to be pretty difficult to get all this stuff together. So essentially I want to try to grab some bunches here, pinch it like that, I'm going to snip. Okay, we're snipped there, I want to do the exact same thing on this side. Try to keep it all one unit. This is really taking some dexterity right here. I'm going to try to join them like that. That is going to be our tail and I'm going to try to line this up so that it's basically sitting not on the side of the fly, but right on the bottom there. All right. Those three wraps do this pretty good. So now I'm just going to make some wraps down to the end here, to the bend of the hook basically. Okay, that looks pretty good guys. I'm happy with that. I feel like if I just filled this body in with some white, that right there would catch some fish for me. But since we're getting fancy with the chicken feathers, let's see what we can do here. I've got an idea. I've got an idea for a filler. I've got some Tungsten Putty, something that we sell at Googesquad.com, it's a terminal tackle deal. Use it on all sorts of stuff, but I'm going to try to add a little putty here in string form because I don't have any lead wire and I do need to add some weight. I'm also trying to add a little something to the front of this head here. That thing is like really stringy. That is surprisingly stringy. So I just want to add this little extra weight here because I'm going to be adding more of this plumage and we need a little extra weight right there. I have no idea how much that is. I'm actually quite shocked. I've never done that before in my life and it actually worked pretty well. As we add our next layer, it should all kind of mix in here. This is kind of fun guys, I'm not going to lie. So next thing we're going to do, we're going to take a small, this would be a saddle feather off of a hen, just going to basically tie it in to the back real quick. Again, trying not to get this twisted. OK, now I'm just going to wrap this up front using the quill and we'll sort of go over that putty. Snip that down. Voila, look at this. Look at this fun little fly we have going. That actually turned out so much better than I was anticipating. I've never tied a fly like this in my life. Tie in a little filler right here at the head. 100% did not work. Pull this stuff back. Then we'll start wrapping it up pretty good as far as I think this will catch fish. I'm not sure I don't screw it up, so just wrapping up the head. That feels fairly good. Then I'm just going to use this little whip finish tool to clean it up, finish it up. Just learned how to do this today. We are fresh, fresh out the gate here. We will snip this off and this is, I think, still going to sink OK. You may have to add a little bit of weight to it, but I'm going to just dab a little super glue. I don't have any fancy fly glue or anything like that. Just working with what I got. I'm just going to take that and smear it around the head here so you don't have a brush. You guys comment down below if you tie flies, what vice do I need to get to improve my experience. I want you guys to give me a few threads that I need to get. I've got some threads that I'm really not happy with. OK, there we have it. What do we call this one? We'll call it naked neck because I think most of the feathers came off of naked neck. We will definitely be taking this one to the water tomorrow. I might start out with that one actually. Let's move on to a little bit bigger weight of a fly that we can tie because I want to utilize the Colonel Sanders hackle in here. I know you're really not supposed to use that on a wet fly, but we're just playing around experimenting. Let's tie up another one and this time we're actually going to use a little croppy jig head. For this one here, we're going to use a 1.32 ounce croppy jig head. First things first, go ahead and just tie in our little base here for adding our tail. Snip that off and we're going to add this filler right here first. So difficult right there. I'm going to line that little quill up with the hook. I'm trying here guys. I'm struggling, but I'm trying. I'm going to try to push this material back and make it sort of like a fluff, a woolly booger fluff here. This is not movie quality. This is what Farrell would say. Shout out step brothers. Alright, so we'll go ahead and tie that front off. Okay, a little blob booger. I don't really know where this one's going to be honest with you, but I know it's going to include some Colonel Sanders. So we'll go all the way back to the end again. Back here without making things too weird. I'm going to tie in the tip, just the tip. A couple wraps there. And then we will attempt to fluff, fluff and wrap. I'm not going to add a crazy amount of this stuff because this is really getting wild right here. Look at this spindly dude here. A couple wraps holding in place. I don't know. I don't know what that is, but it looks kind of cool. Alright, let's finish it up. This is the Colonel Sanders right here. Shout out to my boy. Well, bam. That's a dual purpose, baby. I can use that with crappie. Colonel. The Colonel fly. There it is. In all its glory. Next up, we've got an eighth ounce Guggen squad crappie jig with an under spin. I've been this little plastic keeper out because we won't need that. That looks okay. Snip it. Take part of that quill off. There's enough on there. It's wet. It's got a little cocktail. Let's finish it up and glue it up. That's a cool little jig right there. Another one we can take to the crappie zone. One more we just tied up. That looks really good. Some of that plumage and one of those hen hackles. Put a little orange hat on it. A little different, but guys, I think this is going to work. I hope it's going to work. But we will take these to the river in the morning and see if we can catch a trap on our chicken flies. I just met up with my boys at camp here. They've been up here for about a week. Frosty this morning. About 29 degrees. It's going to get colder and colder. But we got our chicken flies. Chicken lures. Full waiter program right now. It's about 9 a.m. Sun is just starting to come out. Hope that we don't get any ice in our guides. Something that will start wearing down. But we're going to try these things. Just see what we can do. See if our flock can produce some trout. Got a pretty decent flow going on today. Oh, jeez. Got to cover my fingertip for the time being. My goodness. Let's try to get in here and not bust ourselves up too bad. Uh oh. Yeah, it could get a little slick right here. The stick. The stick is key. I'm just going to use our stick to kind of navigate our way through here. I'm going to go ahead. Oh, no. I just dropped my... I heard that was going to happen. Just dropped my uh... Oh no. I just got my glove wet. Oh no. This is bad. This is bad. The good news is I'll be able to see it. I just don't know if I'm going to be able to grab it. Just stirred up a bunch of dust. First catch of the day is hopefully going to be our stringer. Oh, I got it. We're definitely going to get a little... a little deep here. Oof. All right. Now we're working. Now we're coming out. There we go. All right. We're safe. We have one of our little chicken lures with an indicator. See if that's going to sink like. Ooh, I like that sink rate. That's pretty good right there. I actually thought it would sink a little bit slower than that. That's perfect. I have some with more plumage than others. And uh... See if we can get it in the flow here. Flow's pretty slow. Come on chicken. Come on chicken. I think this is going to work guys. I feel pretty confident. There we go. First fish. Just had to work it a little bit. Yeah, he's digging. Oh yeah. Chicken lure special baby. Oh, we come off. No. Oh, that's good. That's a good sign. Little guy. Little guy. See if we can land him. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, that is our first catch. Using the chicken lures. Winter, winter chicken dinner. That is so cool. Oh yeah, he smashed it. Now we're going to see how much durability we got going on. Just quit wriggling around. Let this tiny guy go. Little tiny eater. Alright, let's examine our fly. Got the water. It's actually warmer than the air. Okay. You know, I would say the body looks pretty sparse. That's why it's sinking so fast. In the water though, it does not look bad. I like it. I'm a fan, obviously. It's my own flock. I got a couple others I want to try, but we'll give this one a few more casts. See if we can get some more bites. Well, maybe we're going to get it back in that specific spot. There we go. Right there. That's in the money. Oh, got him. There we go. Yes. Another little guy. Still just way cool. These are so much smaller than the ones I was catching the other day. Up on my tanny. Oh, it's down the hatch. I'll tell you that. I think that's going to be part of my issue. My tying skills aren't the best. Yes, I tied the fly, but is it going to hold up? That's a whole other question. Having that barbless is definitely going to help. Hopefully our super glue is going to help, too. See you, buddy. All right, there's two. This isn't even the Colonel Sanders. I'll try that Colonel Sanders here in a minute. Let's see. Number three, number four. What is this? Hmm, about the same size. Oh, the hook just popped out right there. Okay, let the fish go. It doesn't want to be let go. There he goes. Okay. All right, so I think that's number four. I've had about seven or eight bites on our little naked neck. But I think we're going to do a little switcheroo here. Put all my flies in here last night, neatly organized, ready to go. I still want to give the Colonel a shot. I feel like we have to. But since we got some trout here in front of us confirmed, just give that a snip and we'll try this out. See if that works right there. Oh yeah, slower sink. Slower sink. I like it. There we go. Actually, that one actually slowly started swimming off with it. It wasn't really a big bop. There's a little better fish. It's actually resisting. Might be one for the stringer. These are all stock trout, by the way. Oh God, that was a good one. I lost him. Damn, come it. Definitely would have put him in the frying pan. Bigger fish on the hot chicken. Don't want to lose this fly. I need to take notes on it because that looks... It's a good one. Perfect sink rate. It's got nice body. It's a tiny little chicken feather shell. It's not like I needed it very many. Literally one side of a down feather. Just filled in nicely. There we go. I can barely tell in these waves. Trying not to lose this one. Lee. Apparently my hook is not doing well at barbless. Normally don't have an issue. They were just figuring out how to get it out of their mouth. There we go. Figuring out a little retrieve that they like. A tiny guy. He's probably gonna... I wish he would come off. It's always those little tiny ones that just... They never come off. I think this flies work much better. You know what? He's decent. He's decent. I'll probably throw him on. And now you can flop. Oh, fingers are wet. Oh, there's another one. I've got ourselves a little pot of them there. Yeah, he feels quite small. Quite small, but I am just really happy with my fly. Tied this last night, guys. Do a little dance, do a little dance. That's another one about the same size. I'll probably throw him on. Just want my lure back, dude. Filling a big one on the hot chicken. Listen, we're gonna warm you up by a nice warm campfire. It's all gonna be good. I'm just gonna look at this fly, okay? It's been wet, but this link, I feel like, is perfect in the feathers. With a little refinement, this could be much better. It needs more body, but I really do like the sink rate. Let's see if I can plop this down in front of me here so you guys can see. This is that three millimeter, okay? That right there. I like that sink rate, especially if it's a little more flow. It could probably go a little bit lighter, but trying to get it down there, you know, about three feet hooked up. Hooked up. This could be our last stringer fish. Let's see what we got. Oh yeah, here we go. Come on, baby. A little show. I think he's getting smaller by the second, but he will eat. He's same size. Same size stalker. Came from the same school. Actually, he's a little bigger. A little bit bigger. Look at that. I can't wait to get home and tell my chickens how well their little feathers have done. All right, we're getting real frosty. Real frosty, so we're going to make a change. We're going to put on the kernel fly. Interested to see what these hackles do in the water. It's kind of more like a blob. Blob flies definitely do work. Rainbow trout like them. All right, let's see what that's going to do. Oh man, that thing sinks like a rock. But it has an interesting profile. So that's a 1.32 ounce head. There's one on the kernel. He's not big, but he's doing the kernel right. Kernel sanders for the win. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Ah, baby. All right, let's have a look at the fly. Let's see how it's doing. Yeah, you know, a lot of those hackles, they just kind of folded back, but it's got some nice bush in the water. It's a good bush. All right, guys, we have done it. We have caught quite a few fish on our chicken flies, including the kernel flies that we made. Ah, it's pretty awesome. There's one. Oh gosh, that's a big one. That's a real big one. It feels so much bigger. That's a nice trout. Really nice trout. There we go. Biggest one of the day for old kernel. Oh, and I stuck that one, guys. It didn't move. Come here. Oh yeah, there's a chunk. Oh, baby. Oh, can't keep them because we already got our three, but... Ah. Biggest one of the day on old kernel. That is awesome. You're not going to get much bigger than that in this little spot, I can tell you. Got my hook. Look at that. Oh, look at that. Oh, he just shot some juice in my face. Let him go. Trout cream on my face. Totally worth it, man. Totally worth it for that fish. Worked hard. Worked hard on tying the flies. But catching that big one right there. That's a really good one for this pool. Can't beat it. Honestly, guys, when I started today's video, I was thinking, man, if I can tie a fly that looks decent, maybe I'll get lucky and get a fish on one of these. But as I started tying that first fly even, I said, wow, this actually looks pretty decent. And I think I'll be able to get a buy on this. I got a decent chance. And as I tied more and more and got better at them, I had a lot of confidence coming into the day. So even though it was freezing cold, kind of tough conditions, we soaked our chicken flies out there and we got bit. So I'll probably mess around with trying some crappie jigs and definitely tying some other simple flies using my chicken's feathers. But there you have it. You can absolutely catch fish on homemade chicken feather flies for lures. So this is actually an interesting little excursion that I'm on right now. This is kind of an annual trip that I do with some other guy friends. And we do some trout fishing and it's cold this time of year. And conditions are, they can be pretty nasty. And we got some nasty conditions here. I forgot my camping cook set. I'm truck camping. I didn't bring the full camper out here. We're going to be in a little bit of an interesting situation sleeping. Stay tuned for the next video. We're going to try to catch some more trout. And we're going to see if we can survive some freezing temperatures in the back of the shed. So thank you guys for tuning in today. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel so you can see all the outdoor content coming up and smash the like button. Please, sure do appreciate you being here. Enjoy your time in the great outdoors. And I'll see you back in the next one.