H.S.C. Colobus Ape

Long Colobus Ape (Colobus guereza) back hair dyed in black is the original wing material for the legendary Ray Brooks’s Sunray Shadow. Brooks fished Norway’s River Laerdal where he invented this genius pattern. Soon it was discovered to be a fabulous salmon fly just about everywhere it was tested.

The specialty of Colobus Ape hair is the hair’s unique ability to get curly when wet. This enables one to make translucent wings from less materials which still have good shape and silhouette. The curliness of the hair also makes it swim beautifully. The hair is soft enough to be very mobile but also stiff enough not to tangle too easily. With a good construction and underwing it is possible to the very effective and reliable flies out of this hair. Good underwing materials for such flies are Polar Bear, Bucktail, Crystal Goat Squirrel. The ape hair compress very little so one needs to be careful when constructing a wing of it. It is good to tie the wing of several thin bunches. The bunches are best shaped so that stye have a clear taper and that the longest hairs are in the middle of it. For the top layer one needs only a fine bunch of the longest hair.

• Uber Long hair is rarely available and is truly long stuff. The longest hairs of this category reach to 30cm!
• L/XXL is from long to very long hair. It is best for the main wing of larger Sunray Shadow style flies. Typical hair length 8-22cm.
• S/M is shorter yet very useful material. It is especially useful for underwings and main wings of small to medium sized flies. It is also great for hook flies. Typical hair length 3-7cm.

The density of the hair in an ape pelt varies. For this reason the sizes of the pieces in each bag varies as we pack this material according to the volume of hair!

Colobus Ape (Colobus guereza) is CITES II/EU B-listed species. The material is of legal origin. We do not sell this material for customers outside the EU!

This material is very rare and difficult to obtain.