DIY Fly Tying Dubbing - Fox, Squirrel, Raccoon, Synthetic - BIG money saver! 

Outstanding tip! I'm going to pin this comment so others will see it too. (Added bonus- your dubbing will smell nice and fresh.)

And use a dryer sheet on hair stacker!!

@@huntingmissouri5420 -Another great idea! I've never even thought about that, but sometimes hair does stick a bit in the stacker. Genius!

somebody did this and caught fish? i fear chemicals will remain on the hairs.

@@SavageFlieshi 👋 from 🇨🇦 #YSW where I follow you 💯 from

Thanks Edward! Judith must be a very understanding wife. :-) I've got a gray and orange cat but haven't resorted to giving either of them a hair cut to replenish my fly tying materials!

I was going to post a question about using pet fur, but I guess that you have answered that before I asked it. I will have to get my sister, the crazy cat lady of the family, to send me some orange tabby fur.

Thanks Bob-- I did not know that but it makes me feel even better about my choice of yarn. If a master like Gary LaFontaine uses it, there has to be some merit to it. :-)

Ha! My cat’s has. 🤣

@@SavageFlies ha ha

Thanks Tanner! I just bought a bunch of furs from your recommendation. Haven't received them yet, but hopefully soon. I plan on doing a video on dyeing soon so stay tuned for that. :-)

You are most welcome! I tell you, I love mixing my own dubbing blends. I have my grinder always plugged in under my bench and I don't hesitate to grab it when I think a mix I'm about to use could use a little flash or sparkle thrown in. So I don't always mix up a bunch at a time. Sometimes I'll make just enough for the handful of flies I'm tying at the moment. But one word of caution if you do that... you might make a cool blend, take it out and it looks great in the water and catches a few fish, then you go back and totally forgot how you made it. If I'm smart, I'll put the blend in a little Ziploc bag and write what's in it "just in case" I ever want to make it again. :-)

@@SavageFlies Matt, I went to Dollar Tree and bought acrylic yarn in multiple colors. I wound up making my version of a hare's ear that was as good as store bought dubbing and made some cressbug flies. I do have one last question though. You mentioned some flash. I read online that people either use some antron yarn or angelina fibers mixed in. What have you had success with? Again, thanks so much...

Yep, and one other commenter mentions using dryer sheets as well. I'm definitely going to try that next time. :-)

Thanks Ryan, and I agree 100%. I mean, I advocate supporting your local fly shop whenever possible, but the price of some tying materials can certainly be frustrating. I did do some shopping at a Hobby Lobby recently and I'm thinking of doing another craft store materials video soon. Thanks for the note!

That's a great idea! Which pom-poms are you talking about? I think I can envision seeing some in craft stores, but are they the small ones you might find in the sewing section? The ones about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch in diameter? Or are you talking about something bigger? I'd like to give this a try!

@@SavageFliesI use the small ones, 1/2 to an inch in size. They're kind of like a doughnut so I just poke a thin scissors into the middle and cut the small thread loop that holds them together. Bright yellow and green are fantastic. Your coffee grinder & yarn method works with a blender if you put a smaller lid inside to keep everything close to the blades. Now I'm going to experiment with adding some cut up holographic ribbon slivers to the yarn to make a version of ice dub.

Thanks Nathan-- I appreciate the kind words! I'll answer the best I can... 1. Wool yarn will definitely work. It can be a bit more expensive though. I will also make a wool blend (without any fur added) as lots of recipes call for a wool dubbing. 2. I mostly only make dubbing from the body fur, but some animals' tails actually have enough underfur in them that you can make a decent dubbing. I've made some with a coyote tail before (very buggy, and only used on big nymphs), and raccoon tail as well. But for the most part, I couldn't tell the difference between dubbing made from a raccoon's tail and its body. A fox tail might be akin to a coyote, but I wouldn't try dubbing from a squirrel tail. I just don't think it would work well at all. Squirrel tails make great hair wings, but that's about it. 3. Yes, furs definitely have different characteristics worth noting. The rodents that live in or near water (beaver, muskrats, nutria) have a more waxy underfur which can actually make them more water repellent. And if they're used in wets or nymphs, they'll hold small air bubbles that can give the bug a translucent quality. The more land-based varmints like raccoons or opossums have a less waxy underfur, and it can be finer, almost a wool-like quality. So what is best to use and when? That's a million dollar question! I mostly listen to the pattern's creator, or just go by the recipe. Unless I'm experimenting and then I just wing it. I think really serious and innovative tiers will try different mixes and check them out in tanks, with different currents and light conditions. Not something I really do, but maybe someday. :-) Great questions Nathan, and thanks for asking! Cheers. -Matt

Wow, that's a cool compliment to hear my friend. Thanks for watching!

I don't go through all the trouble of tanning anything. For a hide like raccoon, oppossum or fox, I just skin it, maybe tack the pelt to a piece of plywood (fur side toward the board) and cover it with salt for a day or two to dry it out. It'll be all stiff after it's dried, but that's fine. As long as you scrape the underside pretty clean it won't attract bugs or start stinking.

Ha, thanks Robert! I don't see why you couldn't use human hair. Of course I'd have to use facial hair as I wouldn't get much dubbing from the top of my head. :-)

That's a great idea David! Thanks for the note my friend. :-)

Outstanding Joe! You're going to have some fun with all that. :-)

I got it Johnny. I still try to check comments every couple of days. And I appreciate the tips! I've never even thought about using coffee stirring sticks or Caprisun straws. I'll definitely keep this in mind if I ever learn to tie tube flies. :-)

Ha! It's been a long time since I've had enough hair to even consider using my own. :-) But I did buy some kind of fur stole from a thrift shop back in the fall. I can't quite tell if it's rabbit or fox, but it was a pretty big piece for two bucks so whatever it is, it's good cheap dubbing. :-)

Thanks Steven! I've never tried polypropylene yarn but I do add the Angel Hair to get the sparkle. I appreciate the note. :-)

Thanks Edward! Appreciate the nice comment. Hope you're having a great weekend. :-)

Thift stores to!

Well thank you my friend! I appreciate the kind words. Good luck in your tying and let me know if you ever have any Swedish flies you'd like me to try for the channel. :-)

@@SavageFlies Thanks! 🤗 Thats a hard question. I would probably say the Swedish made "ms supperpuppa". Cant the name in English but its basically a emerging dragonfly 👍

Yikes! That's an expensive trip to town. I probably wouldn't go too often either. Thanks for the note Francois!

Great point Paul. I forget which pattern it was, but there is one nymph where the originator would dub a big body, coat the fur with varnish, let it sit for a couple of hours to get semi-hard, then smash it flat with pliers. And I'm 100% with you on aquatic mammals making great dry fly dubbing as their underfur is usually waxy as they depend on it being water repellent to keep dry.

No doubt you can save a ton making your own dubbing. But what I like best about it, is all the cool color and combination mixes you can make. Possum, acrylic and a little bit of muskrat? Throw in some wool yarn? Why not!

Absolutely, that's what I usually do! Just get a couple of Ziploc sandwich bags to put the shaved fur in. I usually put one squirrel's worth of fur per bag, but then you can fit 3-4 tails in a single bag.

Hahaha! No issue with me! I've been known to take a back road when coming home just because I might get lucky and find a fresh raccoon. :-)

Thanks Ed, and you're 100% right. You can save a ton of money making your own dubbing from furs you pick up however you can get them. I appreciate the note my friend. :-)

Hi Dale; thanks for the question! A lot of tiers are going to tell you that you need to go to a fly shop and look at it in person. And that's fine if you have easy access to a shop. But I know that's not practical for a lot of us. And since a lot of us do have to buy materials from online shops, you can generally go by a company's reputation for quality. For example, Whiting Farms is a hackle company. That's really all they do and they have some great stuff. It can be pricey but my rule of thumb is to buy the most expensive you're comfortable paying for. Note, I don't say buy the best quality you can afford. Plenty of tiers could afford to spend a hundred bucks for a Whiting silver-grade full dry fly cape in kingfisher blue, but if you tie four flies a year with it, that would be a crazy investment. Now a half cape of a bronze-grade in grizzly for $35 could be an excellent investment. So many dry flies call for a grizzly that if you tie a lot of dry flies for trout, you'll likely get your money's worth. Aside from Whiting, there are two other premium hackle providers that I'm familiar with. (There are probably others as well.) But I'm talking about Metz and Keough. I've had a few of their saddles and capes over the years and they've been excellent. Do note that different outfits use different grading criteria. Whiting uses bronze, silver and gold whereas others use the standard Grade #1, 2 and 3 I think. You can probably find out what exactly these mean on their websites. Hareline is another company worth considering but they aren't primarily hackle sellers. Some of their stuff is cheaper, but it's also not as good. That's not a knock on them as a company, as they have some great dubbing products, but a $10 neck "chunk" of their dry fly hackle will have a few good feathers but not enough to tie a lot of flies. So where to buy? I do a lot of ordering from these, probably in this order: J. Stockard, the Fly Shack, and the Caddis Fly shop. They've usually got a pretty good selection in stock. One last note, I did a hackle "primer" video last year. It might be helpful for you: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-J56c-Avq2I0.html Thanks again for the note. Cheers. -Matt

Thanks Debora! Experimenting with all this is one of the more fun aspects of tying. :-)

Well thank you David! I appreciate the kind words my friend. :-)

Oh yeah, if you bought one skein for each color, you'd have enough of it for more than a lifetime!

Thanks Keith! Appreciate you watching my friend. 😁

Thanks for the note Kort. I don't do too much for any I harvest. I may tack them to a board, with the fur side down, and just coat the skin side with salt for a couple of days. That usually dries them pretty good. It does make them stiff but I'm not making hats so it works fine. And if I'm afraid the animal could have had some kind of bugs or mites, I'll cut the pelt into smaller pieces, put them in Ziploc freezer bags and throw in the freezer for a couple of days.

You might be able to use this type dubbing to make an egg pattern but I probably wouldn't and would just use a McFly foam which is much easier to get the bulk you'll need.

Thanks Kenneth! You're a true veteran of the sport and I appreciate you watching and commenting to help others, particularly the new folks who will carry on the tradition after us. Cheers. -Matt

@@SavageFlies Let me add that there are a lot of thing to add or make dubbing,add a little steel wool to make a quick desent dubbing.Too many to mention, let the be the sky be the limint.

That's a common question Randy. You can certainly make dubbing out of yarn with nothing else. A synthetic yarn (acrylic, polyester, or rayon) can make a great dubbing. In fact, if you buy a synthetic dubbing like a Superfine, it's probably made out of some mixture of these. Different animal furs will just give you different textures or bugginess. And generally different properties. Regarding bugs or mites, they're usually not a problem for most of us but you do want to be aware that they could become an issue. I've never had a bug or moth problem and I keep a lot of my furs and skins stored by tacking them up to a cork board.

That's a common question Randy. You can certainly make dubbing out of yarn with nothing else. A synthetic yarn (acrylic, polyester, or rayon) can make a great dubbing. In fact, if you buy a synthetic dubbing like a Superfine, it's probably made out of some mixture of these. Different animal furs will just give you different textures or bugginess. And generally different properties. Regarding bugs or mites, they're usually not a problem for most of us but you do want to be aware that they could become an issue. I've never had a bug or moth problem and I keep a lot of my furs and skins stored by tacking them up to a cork board.

How small are you cutting the pieces? Maybe try a little bit smaller, say a half inch or less. And remember a coffee grinder won't cut any fibers. It'll just mix them up.

@@SavageFlies Thanks! I’ll give it a try and let you know how it works!

@@SCYCOFISHINGHUNTING Awesome; I'd love to hear!

Thanks Joe! I'll do another DIY dubbing after the DIY dyeing materials is done. Lots of stuff on my to-do list. :-)

@@SavageFlies AWESOME CANT WAIT

Sure man, one of the best things about fly tying is you can do anything you want! Lots of people use some of their cat's fur. How I've heard it done is you just take a pet hair brush (maybe one of the ones with metal tines), give them a good brushing and then pull some of the soft hairs off the brush to mix for dubbing. I imagine you could even use some of the long hairs off your dog's tail too. :-)

It's not just steelhead flies Kevin... I'm in the same boat and I tie everything! :-)

That's a bargain!

Okay, I've been doing this channel for just over four years now and you're the first one to ever ask that question! I've got four little symbols, all in circles. A butterfly (my wife and I got married in a butterfly garden), a princess crown (my daughter loved Disney princesses at the time. She's a teenager now so those days are long gone!), a dinosaur (my son loved dinosaurs as a kid), and an atomic symbol (I was a physicist for the Navy). I've got another one on my leg that my daughter drew for me when she was six. It's a turtle that says "I love Dad." Probably my favorite one. :-)

I'm in Maryland so sometimes hot but mostly moderate. That was a pretty typical tail for what we have around here.

@@SavageFlies i was surprised to discover raccoon are one species that is found all over the world in many different variation. before i thought they were a "Canadian" animal (i am in Canada). they differ from one place to another, so it is why there might be difference between the racoon found.

I suppose you could to be extra careful but I usually just put in Ziploc bags and throw in the freezer for a few days.

Good tip; I probably should be more careful!

Haven't tried it but when it comes to coffee grinder you'll need a good quality one. I bought a very cheap one, it didn't give me the result I was hoping for... It didn't even separate the fibers properly💀

Thanks Jeff! Tanned pelts are usually easier to work with, but if I'm using patches of fur I harvested from roadkill, they're not tanned. As long as you use some kind of salt or Borax on the skin side, they'll dry out well enough to last you a long time. And you just clip the fur off with scissors or an electric razor and you'll be good to go!

@@SavageFlies you are very welcome. Oh ok cool. One of the youtube channels i follow did a coyote pelt giveaway and i was one of the lucky winners lol. Thanks for commenting.

Great tip Andrew! I guess I've been pretty lucky so far and still have all my fingers. :-)

Great point! I suppose putting in a ziploc bag in the freezer for a day might take care of that though.

If I’m not really trying to change the color, I’d use as little synthetic as possible. Maybe up to 20% just to make it easier to dub. But if you’re trying to make it a new color, you’ll usually have to use more of the acrylic. Even up to 50% or so.

@@SavageFlies Thanks,

Yes, in fact I just bought some acid dye last week! I haven't tried it yet, but dyeing furs before mixing would likely make a better mix. The way I do it in this video is a bit easier, but I definitely want to do it with dyed furs in the near future. Thanks for the note my friend and welcome to Savage Flies!

A lesson i learned the hard way, less powdered dye is better. I was wondering why my olive was ending up brown and the feedback that I received was that I used too much powder - I only used 1/8th of a teaspoon for 2 quarts of water.

Great advice, thank you!

Oh man, I don't know! Is the tail banded with black and brown hair? I suppose you could make some cool looking bucktails with it. :-)

@@SavageFlies Oh yes, for sure regular american style coon. I will have to see what inspires me from your videos. Your budget friendly approach to tying has won me over to the idea of getting into this hobby, I always thought was way too expensive. Only problem is I waited so long my eyesight isn't what it was!

Russell- I never do, but I will only get roadkill if it is pretty fresh. If needed, I would shave the fur I wanted and put it in ziploc bags and put the bags in a freezer for a few days. Same thing with pelts or patches of fur. Dry them with salt for a couple days and then put in bags in the freezer. I've never had a problem with bugs or it smelling bad. Thanks for the question!

@@SavageFlies thanks

Thanks George! I'm pretty sure I got the most basic Krups one Walmart had. I believe it was about $15. Mine isn't this exact one, but it's pretty much the same thing: www.walmart.com/ip/KRUPS-Fast-Touch-Electric-Coffee-and-Spice-Grinder-With-Stainless-Steel-Blades-F2034251/38470909?athbdg=L1200

@@SavageFlies thanks so much

Sam- thanks for the note. I would say my favorite for wet flies, at least what I use the most, is probably rabbit with squirrel being a close second. Or opossum. That's a great look too! I think any varmint that doesn't live in or around water makes good wet fly and nymph dubbing.

Wow, thanks Doug. I appreciate this comment. And yes, I agree... making our own dubbing mixes is one of the coolest things we can do as fly tiers. I love playing around with dyeing and mixing possum. And you never know when you'll come up with something that's is almost magical. :-)

Great idea Sweyn! I have several pieces of scrap carpet in my garage. Of course I have no idea what they're made of, but it could be Antron. :-)

@@SavageFlies I like to mix it with natural fur like you do. Antron yarn works as well (but you already know that).

Thanks Steven! Making your own dubbing can be pretty fun. I'm thinking of making a few batches of opossum this weekend. Not that I need any more, but it's just fun to experiment and play around with different combinations. :-)

Ha! Kook Aid? That's a new one. For dyeing fur I suppose? Probably a cleaner process than the acid dye I'm about to give a try. :-)

Thanks Michael-- I've actually seen Barry Ord Clark using a dubbing rake but have never tried it myself. I'll have to check one out. Cheers. -Matt

Thank you my friend, I'm glad to have you here! Let me know if you ever have any questions or requests. Cheers. -Matt

That's a good question Chris, and one I haven't figured out yet. The "angel hair" stuff I mention will certainly add some sparkle to any fur dubbing, but it's not going to look at all like an ice dub. I'm going to have to think more about this and the next time I'm in Michael's or AC Moore, look around for anything that looks like we could make an ice dubbing out of. Thanks for the note. :-)

Kyle- synthetic definitely has it's place. You can mix it by hand to get the perfect color you want, and it can make some excellent dry fly dubbing. Synthetics usually shed water easily, so your dry fly bodies dry off with just one back cast. Some naturals are water repellent too-- furs like muskrat, woodchuck and otter. Usually the water type varmints that have a naturally waxy fur. Animals like rabbits, fox, raccoons and squirrels have fur that is not as water repellent and they make better nymph and wet fly bodies. (Because after they get wet, they generally stay wet.) Also, you can get some great deals on fur scraps or pelts. Check out Glacier Wear. A pound of scrap remnants will make a LOT of dubbing and is quite inexpensive. Good luck!

Yep, same here! Hare's masks are generally pretty cheap and you can get them already dyed in a few convenient colors. Probably why it's so popular!

Ha! I've never actually given a critter a hair cut on the side of the road. You might get some pretty strange looks! (I'll throw something in the back of the truck and take home go get the fur later. :-) )

You're welcome Jimmy! Thanks for the note my friend. :-)

Outstanding Jonathan! I think coming up with some new and unique dubbing blends is one of the most fun things we as tiers can do. It's much more enjoyable than dyeing materials. That can be a chore (and a mess). Thanks for the note. :-)

Great tip; thank you! And this note came just in time… I found four skeins of wool yarn on clearance at JoAnne’s this weekend. 😀

You bet Ron. I'm going to try my hand at creating some mixes with furs that have been dyed first. Starting with some of that you sent. And by the way, I got one of the Meck books from your list today. At first glance it looks good.

Sam- great questions. You are right that the diameter of the fibers would determine the overall fineness of the dubbing. Cutting the pieces at different lengths would just change how easy it is to get on your thread. And maybe the spikiness of it. Think if you cut each piece at 1/4 inch, it might be harder to get to stick to the thread, but would probably be spikier too. As far as recipes for dubbing mixes, I have never seen anything online. I have seen it mentioned in books, but that was for specific patterns. Look up dubbing mixes for Tup's Indispensable and you'll see what I'm talking about. Mike Valla talks about it in his Catskill book. Also here: www.sparsegreymatter.com/viewtopic.php?t=10363