Fly Tying · Materials Guide
Pine Squirrel for Fly Tying
Zonker strips, micro leeches, collars and where pine squirrel fits against rabbit
Pine squirrel is one of the best natural materials for building movement into a small fly without building a large fly around it. The fur is short and dense, the hide is supple, and the finished profile stays tight enough for micro streamers, leeches, collars and compact jig patterns.
Rabbit gets most of the attention whenever fly tiers talk about hide strips. That makes sense. Rabbit is soft, mobile and available in an enormous range of cuts and colors. But scale matters. On a small streamer or leech, the same long fur and broad movement that make rabbit so effective can create more profile than the pattern needs. That is where pine squirrel earns its place.
Pine squirrel is not a substitute you use only when rabbit is too large. It is a distinct fly tying hair and fur material with its own proportions and behavior. Wapsi describes pine squirrel as a material that quickly became popular in fly tying and specifically cites John Barr's Slumpbuster as a pattern built around it. Their current line includes both whole and zonked skins in natural and dyed colors.
The Short Version
- Use pine squirrel when you want fur movement at a smaller scale. Its shorter, dense fibers build a slimmer profile than the longer fur commonly associated with rabbit strips.
- Micro and Standard are different tools. Feather Craft stocks Wapsi Pine Squirrel Zonker Strips in both cuts so you can match strip width to the hook and pattern.
- The hide can stay on the fly or the fur can come off it. Use the strip for a wing, tail or zonker body; remove the fur for dubbing loops, collars and compact thoraxes.
- Rabbit is still the better material when you want more length and a broader swimming profile. Pine squirrel excels when control and scale matter more.
What Makes Pine Squirrel Different?
The defining feature is proportion. Wapsi Pine Squirrel Zonker Strips are cut from thin, supple hide and carry short, dense fur. In the water, that fur does not need a large strip or long fibers to create movement. It pulses close to the hide and produces a compact, breathing profile.
That is particularly useful on flies that need to remain small after the material is added. A size-10 or size-12 leech, for example, can lose its proportions quickly if every material extends far beyond the hook. Pine squirrel lets you keep the movement of natural fur while controlling the silhouette.
The hide matters too. A supple strip bends with the hook shank and responds to current rather than behaving like a stiff piece of leather. When used as an overwing or tail, the strip itself contributes articulation. When wrapped around the shank, the short fur builds a dense body without requiring a long-fiber haircut afterward.
Wapsi's own Pine Squirrel Skin, Zonked page identifies the material with patterns such as the Slumpbuster, and its Fly Tyer's Room includes Pine Squirrel streamers, trout Spey patterns, balanced streamers and Landon Mayer's Mini-Leech. That range is a useful clue: pine squirrel is not confined to one recipe.
Pine Squirrel vs. Rabbit
The useful comparison is not which material is better. It is which one gives the pattern the profile you want.
| Characteristic | Pine squirrel | Rabbit |
|---|---|---|
| Typical profile | Compact and tight, especially useful on small leeches, jigs and finesse streamers. | Broader and fuller, well suited to bunny flies, larger zonkers, matukas and streamers. |
| Fur character | Short, dense fibers that create subtle pulsing movement. | Generally longer, soft fibers that create a larger flowing silhouette. |
| Scale | Excellent where the fur itself needs to stay proportional to smaller hooks. | Excellent where you want more length, volume and visual presence. |
| Strip options | Feather Craft stocks Wapsi in Micro and Standard cuts. | Available in numerous widths and cuts, including 1/8-inch strips, crosscut, micro and magnum. |
| Good starting applications | Micro leeches, Slumpbusters, jig streamers, collars, slim swing flies. | Double Bunnies, larger zonkers, matukas, articulated streamers, flesh-style patterns. |
Our 1/8-inch Rabbit Hide Strips illustrate the other side of the comparison: soft-tanned rabbit cut for strong water action while maintaining a streamlined strip profile. Pine squirrel does the same general kind of work at a different scale.
Choose the hide by the profile you want after the fly gets wet, not by which fur happens to be more popular at the tying bench.
Feather Craft Tying Bench
Micro vs. Standard Pine Squirrel Zonker Strips
Feather Craft stocks Wapsi Pine Squirrel Zonker Strips in two cuts: Micro and Standard. Think of the choice as a proportion decision rather than a strict hook-size rule.
Micro
Small Flies, Tight Profile
Use Micro when a full-width strip would dominate the hook. It is the better starting point for small leeches, compact jig flies, small stillwater streamers and patterns where the hide must turn or lie cleanly on a limited shank.
Standard
More Presence, Same Character
Use Standard when the fly can carry a wider strip and you want more visible fur. It fits larger leeches, Slumpbuster-style flies, sculpin profiles and streamers where the hide itself contributes to the body and movement.
Do not size a strip from the dry material alone. Wet the fur or sweep it backward with your fingers and look at how much hook remains visible. If the fur completely hides the body, gap and intended silhouette, move down in strip width or trim the underfur selectively. If the fly looks too sparse, move up.
Bench Rule
The strip should support the fly's profile, not become the entire profile by accident. On small hooks, a few tenths of an inch in material width can completely change how the finished fly looks and swims.
Where Pine Squirrel Works Best
Micro leeches
This is the application most tiers discover first. Pine squirrel gives a small leech continuous motion without forcing the fly into a bulky streamer profile. Ralph Wood's Pine Squirrel Leech is a well-documented example. California Fly Fisher's pattern archive uses pine squirrel as the wing and tail on a size 10–12 streamer hook, with the strip secured over the body by wire ribbing.
The material is equally at home on modern jig versions. Feather Craft's nymph selection includes small leech-style flies such as Umpqua Mayer's Mini Leech Jig, a good example of the compact profile this category is built around.
Slumpbusters and small streamers
John Barr's Slumpbuster helped establish pine squirrel as a modern streamer material. Wapsi specifically calls out the pattern on its pine squirrel skin pages. The strip creates the tail and overwing while a wrapped or collared section of fur can add body movement without the overall fly becoming oversized.
We stock the finished Slump Buster as a useful reference if you want to see how a squirrel-strip profile carries through a completed fly.
Collars and dubbing loops
You do not have to leave pine squirrel attached to the hide. Clip the fur close to the skin, align it in a material clamp and spin it into a dubbing loop. The mix of soft underfur and guard hair produces a compact collar with more irregularity and movement than a smooth synthetic dubbing.
A Swiss CDC Multi Clamp or Stonfo Dubbing Loop Clips makes this easier because the fibers can be measured, held and transferred into the loop without losing their alignment.
Whole-skin dubbing
Pine squirrel can also be used completely off the hide. Fly Fish Food's Mini Squirrel Leech is a useful example: the fur is shaved from a whole skin, blended and used as dubbing rather than tied in as a strip. That approach preserves the buggy texture of the material while eliminating the leather entirely.
How to Tie With Pine Squirrel Strips
The material is forgiving, but a few small changes in technique make the finished fly cleaner and more durable.
- Separate the fur before tying through the hide. Use a bodkin or damp fingers to part the fibers at the tie-in point so the thread lands on leather instead of trapping a large wad of fur.
- Use firm thread wraps without cutting the hide. A narrow strip does not need crushing pressure. Seat the material, increase tension gradually, and check that the strip remains centered.
- Counter-rib long strips when durability matters. Wire passed through the fur and over the hide can reinforce a zonker wing or body. Wiggle the wire so you trap as little fur as possible.
- Keep the leather side oriented deliberately. For an overwing, the hide normally lies against the top of the hook with the fur flowing rearward. If you wrap a strip, orient it so the fibers sweep the direction you want as each turn advances.
- Use the hide only where you need the hide. For collars and thoraxes, clipping the fur and spinning it in a dubbing loop often produces a cleaner result than wrapping leather around a small hook.
Thread choice depends on hook size and how much tension the material requires. Our Fly Tying Thread Comparison Chart is the better reference than trying to assign one universal thread size to every pine squirrel pattern.
Color: Start With Contrast and Water Conditions
The material is available in enough colors that it is easy to overcomplicate the choice. Feather Craft currently stocks Wapsi strips in natural and dyed colors including brown, black, rust, olive, light olive, sculpin olive, crawdad orange, leech red, claret, chartreuse and purple.
We start with a simple framework:
| Color family | Where we start | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Natural, brown, tan | Clear water, general-purpose trout streamers, sculpin and leech profiles. | Low-contrast, natural presentation with the hide's mottling still visible. |
| Olive / sculpin olive | Streamers, damsel-leaning profiles, stillwater and general subsurface work. | Useful natural tone that pairs easily with dark or metallic underbodies. |
| Black / leech red / claret | Low light, stained water and leech patterns. | Creates a stronger silhouette or darker target. |
| Chartreuse / purple / crawdad orange | Attractor streamers, aggressive fish and situations where visibility matters. | Moves the pattern away from strict imitation and toward contrast and trigger color. |
Color should not be separated from profile. A black micro strip and a black standard strip may be identical in hue but create very different flies. Get the silhouette right first, then tune the color.
When We Reach for Rabbit Instead
Pine squirrel's advantage disappears if the fly actually needs more length and volume. For a larger articulated streamer, Double Bunny, flesh pattern or big zonker, rabbit gives you more material to work with and a broader swimming profile. Feather Craft carries 1/8-inch Rabbit Hide Strips, micro rabbit, crosscut rabbit and magnum cuts because those are different jobs.
That is why we would not describe pine squirrel as a better rabbit. It solves a different design problem.
If we want a compact size-10 leech with a narrow body and a tight strip over the back, pine squirrel is often our first choice. If we want a larger fly with long, sweeping fur and more visual mass, rabbit usually makes more sense.
The same logic applies throughout natural fly tying materials: choose the material whose physical properties create the finished fly you want. Do not choose it because the pattern name or tying recipe says you have to.
A Small Material With a Big Range
Pine squirrel occupies a useful middle ground on the tying bench. It gives you the movement of natural fur without forcing every pattern toward the scale of a larger rabbit-strip streamer. Use the strip whole for a tail, wing or zonker body. Cut the fur from the hide for collars, thoraxes and dubbing loops. Move between Micro and Standard cuts depending on the hook and the amount of profile you want.
The material also scales well across techniques. It can build a small stillwater leech, a jig streamer, a Slumpbuster, a trout Spey pattern or a compact collar. Wapsi's own tying library includes examples across several of those categories, which is a good indication of how broadly the material has been adopted.
For us, that is the real reason pine squirrel belongs in the core fly tying materials drawer. It is not a novelty and it is not simply a smaller rabbit. It is a controlled way to put natural-fur motion into a fly without losing the proportions you built the fly around.
Start with one Micro strip and one Standard strip in a natural color. Tie the same basic leech or streamer in both sizes, get them wet, and compare the profile. The difference becomes obvious much faster in the water than it does on the package.
Feather Craft · Est. 1955