Natural hair has been used for fly tying for centuries. Today, squirrel tails are becoming a very popular jig tying material for crappie jigs, bluegill jigs, and even bass jigs. Squirrel tails for fly and jig tying was a natural choice for me as I love to squirrel hunt and have a ready supply of squirrel tails to tie my bluegill, shellcracker, and crappie jigs. I do tie a larger jig used for smallmouth bass when they are focused on crawfish on gravel bars. Our little crappie and even bluegill jigs work well with the float and fly technique for smallmouth. While I haven’t actually applied this technique myself, I’ve been wanting to for years on Dale Hollow Lake where it works great in the winter, but some of my customers have used my jigs to great success.
Tying jigs to sell I have streamlined my jig tying sequence to get the most jigs per hour when tying. In streamlining this jig tying system I have come up with a great way to clip just enough hairs for each jig quickly. I developed a block for clamping the flattened squirrel tails that spreads the hair in a line I will post a photo of it and I plan to one day produce these clamps to sell in our store.
Here is the best way I have found to prepare squirrel tails for my system.
STEP 1
Remove the tail from the squirrel. Cut the tail above the fine hair at the base of the tail. This hair is more body hair and while it can be used for some jigs and flies, it gets in the way when using my squirrel tail clamp.
STEP 2
Wash the squirrel tails in warm water with quality dishwashing detergent. The dishwashing detergent removes the blood and any other fluids from the tail. Don’t get carried away with the detergent, and keep the water warm, not hot. These things can remove too much of the natural oils from your squirrel tails. This can also be true when leaving the salt on too long, more on that later. Comb your squirrel tails while washing to remove dirt and loose hairs. You can also comb your tails when drying with a hair dryer in the next step.
STEP 3
Use a blow dryer to comb out and dry your squirrel tails. Don’t get the hair dryer too close and keep it moving because it cannot just burn the hair but also dry it out too much. Just keep the dryer moving and comb the hair. This will keep the tails nice and soft making the tying process much smoother.
STEP 4
Carefully slice down the underside of the tail and keep as straight a line as possible to keep your squirrel tail from spiraling. You will see what I mean if you don’t cut straight down the tail. Carefully pull the meat of the tail out of the skin. Be careful not to break the tail. Slowly pulling the meat while watching the skin, so you can assist or cut a little more of the skin from the meat to keep the entire squirrel tail intact.
NOTE: You can leave an inch or so of the tail meat in the tip of the tail. This short piece has very little meat and will cure and dry when you salt your tails. I use the longer hairs at the end of the tail for my hair jigs for crappie.
STEP 5
Once you have your squirrel tails removed from the hair, lay each one on a piece of cardboard and pin the skin back, leaving the green hide exposed for salting. Pinning this skin as flat as possible will help in keeping all of the hairs equal in length. This is more important if you plan on using a block like mine to spread the hair for cutting.
With your squirrel tails flat and pinned nicely to the cardboard use a toothbrush to brush all of the hairs flat and equally spread. Use just a little water when brushing and the hairs will stick open nicely and dry that way leaving you a nice uniform tail for tying.
STEP 6
Once you have your tails pinned out and brushed it is time to salt your squirrel tails. You can use table salt, borax to sprinkle on your green hide to dry it and remove all of the liquid that can rot and make your tail a smelly mess. I have been using red curing salt on my squirrel tails to cure them faster and it works great but it is more expensive and is not necessary.
NOTE: Only leave the salt on the tail long enough to dry the hide. This usually only takes a few days depending on humidity where you store them while drying. Leaving the salt on too long can suck the oils out of the follicles and leave them brittle and no goo for jig tying or fly tying.
When preparing your squirrel tails this way you can efficiently cut your hair evenly and with less mess making your tying smoother and faster.
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