Feather Detox
Keeping your materials bug-free
by Alex Cerveniak

Bugs.  Many of us live for them.

In the off-season, we spend countless hours creating them to fool that monster Brown that reminded us the previous season that the river is his playground, and he’s the bully. During the fishing season it is crucial to be able to recognize what is hatching, what phase of the hatch is occurring, and which magic fly in our box will fool that trout that always seems to rise just a few seconds after the last magic fly drifted overhead. We buy and study books on bugs; sit in front of the computer reading about bugs. Some of us have gone so far as to build micro-ecosystems in small aquariums in our tying rooms just to watch them, in hopes we might get another step ahead of the game. But then there are the bugs we don’t like. Not only do we not like them, we fear them. You know the ones I’m talking about. 

Your wife is at work, so the window is open to pay a visit to your neighborhood fly shop. You go there and see that he just got some new capes in. Not just any capes, they are of the highest quality; these feathers shouldn’t be tied with, but horded like Midas’s gold. You get home before your significant other and even though she’s not here yet, you make a mad dash to your tying room, put the cape in with the rest, then run outside and burn the receipt and the bag it came in.

A few weeks later you decide it’s time to put a few of those feathers to good use. You pull it out of the cardboard box you keep you necks in and start to search out that feather that will be perfect for the fly you’re tying. All of a sudden you notice small black bugs fleeing the scene. Who knows where they came from, but now every neck in that box is totally infested. There are things you can do to try and salvage them, but the most important things you can do to prevent an infestation are done before it happens.

I’ve been fortunate so far and haven’t had any problems, and thought I would share the detox process my materials go through before I tie them to a hook. 

Obviously the first thing you want to do is inspect whatever the material is before you purchase it.  Sometimes this isn’t always possible in the age of the Internet so inspect mailed materials as soon as they arrive. Next I put them in the freezer for about 3 or 4 days.  After putting them in the freezer I run outside and burn the evidence that I made a trip to the fly shop.  After they’ve been thoroughly frozen I pull them out and let them thaw.  Next I remove them from whatever package they were in and put them in a sealed plastic container I purchased at Wal-Mart.

It’s a 9” X 13” rectangular cake container. It has latches on each side so that when closed it is nearly air tight.  When selecting a container make sure that when closed, there is a good seal around the edge. In it I have completely covered the bottom with moth ball crystals. You open it up and the fumes hit you like tear gas. 

Before placing any new materials in this container, I will lay down a fresh layer of paper towels. Then I place the material on top of them and close the lid. 

I leave them in there for another 3-4 days. When I take them out I throw out the paper towels and put the materials in a sealed zip-lock bag with one moth ball in it. 

With hackle, I take an additional step and place each sealed bag in a sealed cedar box. It’s important that the box is cedar, as it repels most of the critters that want to have our feathers for dinner.

And that’s it!