Dying rabbit fur

When I lived in London it was all too easy for me to walk into a fly tackle shop and buy the materials I needed to tie my flies, and to be perfectly honest my ignorance and above all laziness allowed these shop owners to literally rape me of my hard earned cash with sometimes extortionately over priced marked up products.

Okay, I have to agree that curtain products are hard to reproduce, especially when we talk about synthetics, and we all know every pike fly-fisherman needs them to tie his flies, and so, are unavoidable when having to fork out large sums of money for them. When it comes to natural products though, for example furs & feathers one can get far more creative with them & have a more hands on approach to producing these products yourself.

Since moving to Finland I have done just that, and become so much more self sufficient with regards to being more inventive with my fly materials. I’m lucky to have enough contacts here now that provide me with furs and feathers all year round….well especially during the hunting season over here. With the credit crunch hitting all of us in some way or another…me included, I’m now constantly looking for ways to help me from having to stick my hands into my ever deepening pockets.

Probably the most popular natural product that all pike fly-fisherman use on their flies is rabbit fur zonker strips, for tying in those Bunny bugs we all feel need to be in our fly box arsenal. Being a tight arse is nothing to be ashamed off, yet motivating oneself to get off that lazy arse into gear, is! You could save yourself hundreds of Euros/Dollars per year if you’re willing enough to put that little bit of effort in. I mean how many times per week do you find yourself sitting in front of the box with your hand slid just under your belt watching some crap re run you’ve seen before……when actually you could be doing something more productive with your time?. I promise you this, that you’ll get an even greater buzz….I know I do, when the effort that was put into producing these materials myself has caught a pike.

Anyway rabbit fur is one product that is easy for me to acquire here. All it takes is one phone call and the next week I have fresh fur, which with a bit of effort can be cured and used in bundle loads. I understand many of you aren’t as fortunate to have this luxury on tap, but one can still buy whole ready cured and treated rabbit fur form suppliers if you shop around. Once you have the fur, you’ll need to dye it and these tight arse top tip video's will show you how easy it is to do. I have four rabbit pelts in the barn which will be dyed Purple, Black, Olive & Blue and once they are done and I’ve cut them into strips I’ll have made a total saving of around Є420,00. I don’t know about you but that’s a shit loada money….mate!