Colors are really important! More than once was I able to observe, that a change in lure/fly color had tremendous influence on bite frequency! Not only the color itself, but also the contrast that derives from the interplay of several colors can be the key to success.

If someone ties flies just for himself and as a pastime, it can quickly get expensive in the attempt to acquire a good variety of colors from each tying material.

The solution is to split a saddle or a piece of fur/bucktail into several pieces and dye them with colors that are sold to dye eggs! This applies especially to materials and colors that you do not need very often.

These “easter egg colors” come in pellets which are dissoluted in a mix of hot water and vinegar. For our dying purposes, you should replace the vinegar with lye! This lye can be easily made: Fill a coffee filter with wood ashes from the last campfire, your hearth etc. and filter your water through. The result will be a quite strong lye, which feels “soapy” when rubbed between fingers. The lye will open the fibres and let the dye protrude more easily. At the end of the process, adding a little bit of vinegar will neutralize the lye and thereby close the fibres again. This can result in a slight change of colors, most noticably in purple and blue dyes.

You can also mix colors, as e.g. I mixed orange and red to achieve bright red junglecock (see post picture). Or you can dye e.g. pink marabou in a light blue solution into a nice purple color (needed them for some GT brush flies). The general procedure is as follows:

Then prepare a strong dying solution, I usually make it four times as strong as indicated on the package (twice as much peletts, half the liquids).
Then soak the material in the dye and slowly heat it up again… better not boil it, as the material might shrink or tangle up.
Wait and stir slowly until the color has reached the desired shade.
Take it out of the solution, rinse it well, and then dry it with a hair dryer. For light fluffy feathers as marabou or CDC I recommend putting them into a mesh bag or cover a bucket with mesh and then use the dryer as they will otherwise fly around everywhere…
Even a dark brown/almost black is possible with easter egg colors! This deer hair was dyed with a mix of red and green. On the right is the natural color.
Grizzly soft hackle. In the center is the natural color which was dyed blue and green.