In the November 7 BTS Fly Tying Friday, Al Beatty shared a valuable tip for keeping the humpy’s body clean and the hackle properly seated. He explained that many tiers accidentally let the hump crowd the belly by keeping too much thread tension. His solution: relax the thread, pull upward gently, and maintain tension on the hair as you pull down—this keeps the belly neat and perfectly aligned every time.

When trimming the hair, Al cautioned against cutting the ends too short, which can cause them to pull loose later. Instead, he recommends leaving them long and then using smooth, controlled wraps to scrunch the waste ends forward, tightening them neatly against the wing. Before wrapping hackle, Al preps the feather by stripping slightly more from the top side of the stem than the bottom, allowing the hackle fibres to lay flat and evenly when wound. The result is a tidier, more durable fly with wings that stand just right and hackle that stays where it should.