Last year at the fly fishing fair of Charleroi, Belgium, I had the chance to meet a lama breeder who had started to commercialise the hairs for fly tying purposes.
I had already used lama hairs flies in the past and I knew that it was not that easy to find good quality materials. It didn’t take long before I picked up few packs with nice colors.
The lama is a really special material, even unique I would say. The hairs are really fat, I’m sure it could works as well for tying dry flies (I’ve yet to try this) and you can easily give a nice volume / shape to the fly.
The hairs are more thick at the beginning and become quickly thinner which helps you to easily reach this droplet shape that you want to give to the fly.
In the water, the softness of the material gives life to the fly even if you don’t move it. The hairs are always slowly moving & vibrating. And as the head is more bulky, it pushes a lot of water at each strip.
At the end, the animation of these flies is really interesting and different from other materials.
Something I found really fun is that on each pack, there is the picture and the name of the lama from which the hair has been cut.
Of course, the llamas are not hurt by the process, it’s something sustainable.
If you tie pike flies, I strongly recommend you to give it a try. I’m sure that there are many possibilities to explore, like mixing lama’s hairs with other materials etc…
Don’t hesitate to share your experiments with us in the comments.
Here is the website of the producer, sadly, you can’t buy the hairs online but if you have the chance to go at the fly fishing fair next week they should be there.
Have fun tying !
