Posted on September 22 2018
Every now and then a fly tying material hits the market that seems to make waves amongst our guide staff of ultra-nerdy and ultra-talented fly tyers. Lately, we’ve fallen in love with Hareline’s Ripple Ice Fiber. We’ve been incorporating it more and more into our salmon and steelhead flies, we really dig it, so in typical Deneki fashion, we thought we’d tell you why.
- Its bright, really bright. For some reason Ripple Ice Fiber seems to cause flies to ‘glow’ unlike any other material we’ve used. We’re not sure how exactly, we think it has something to do with the sharp angles at which each fiber is cut allows the material to catch light really well. Either way, if you want your fly to be seen, its about as loud as it gets.
- A little goes a long way. That ‘glow’ we mentioned above takes very few fibers to achieve. That means a package goes a long way. That’s a good thing.
- It works great in dubbing loops. We use dubbing loops a lot to produce water-pushing shoulders and collars in many of our favorite salmon and steelhead flies. Ripple Ice Fiber looks great when blended in a dubbing or composite loop. Due to its shape, it also holds really well too. Both good things.
- Its long enough for a winging material. One thing we really like about Ripple Ice Fiber is that unlike most dubbing, each fiber is several inches long with allows for more uses such as over wings or longer collars.
- Its available in a bunch of great colors. Available in just about every color we can think of, Ripple Ice Fiber makes an awesome edition to any pattern where a high level of ‘sizzle’ is desired.
Ripple Ice Fiber is available in well over a dozen highly fishy colors and retails in the ballpark of $3.95 per package. We highly recommend experimenting with it in your salmon and/or steelhead flies. Pick it up today at your local fly shop, or check out Hareline’s website for more information by clicking right here.