I tie a lot of big flies, so I’m always on the lookout for suitable tying material. I hadn’t seen this bucktail brand before. Nothing else to do but grab a couple of packs to see what they’re like.

Out of the pack, good dense and long bucktail, which is always a promising start.

I tied a couple of flies with it, a Clouser, and a Beast fly with a Buford head. The Clouser was spot-on: sparse, and I trimmed the hair slightly as the bucktail was a good length. (I didn’t need to brush out underfur on either fly.)

The Beast fly had 8 articulated shanks and I needed to get a gradual taper on each shank. This tie needs to be sparse, helping to shed water on the cast, yet it should look bulky in the water.

The tail was fine using the tip of the bucktail – very much the same as used on the Clouser.

The remaining 7 articulations and the two fixed ties on the hook used material from the centre of the bucktail and were all reversed tied. The bucktail did exactly what I wanted it to do. It wrapped around the shanks and hook evenly, and bent back on the reverse tie well, so it could be sparsely applied.

The last step – tying the Buford head. The hair from the base of the tail looked hollow and I thought it would flair well. I grabbed a 1cm clump and tied it in over the hook as the last step. It spun well and did not cut with the thread pressure. The Buford head can make or break your tie, but this flared well, and I didn’t need to trim it.

In hindsight, I could have grabbed a bigger hook than the Ahrex 5/0 saltwater hook, but overall, it’s thumbs up from me for a great product.

Available from The Flyfisher