Raising a few hackles

DELTA — Back in the late 1960s when Tom Whiting was a kid peddling eggs around his Englewood neighborhood he didn't dream he might become a potentate of poultry.

Even in the '80s when his fascination with chickens was leading him toward a doctorate in poultry genetics at the University of Arkansas, he was only just discovering the dominant role chicken feathers play in fly fishing.

"I started looking into it. And the more I looked, the more interesting it sounded because it's sort of pretty genetics," said Whiting, 44, who started raising some hackles in the fly-fishing industry in 1989.

Pretty, indeed. Fly tiers demand quality hackle, especially for the stiff hackle collars that float their dry flies. Hackle sizes and colors must be precise to match the aquatic insects trout feed on and because fly tying is an art form that strives always to find the best and most beautiful materials.

Whiting used the best chicken blood lines in the world to hatch his fledgling business, Whiting Farms, at a defunct mink ranch near Delta. He began with the famous grizzly roosters of retired Oregon hackle grower Henry Hoffman. Then he bought the Hebert-Miner line of fighting cocks, with genetics dating to legendary Catskill fly tier Harry Darbee.

"I'm the custodian of these lines, most of which go back to fewer than a dozen individuals in 36 years," he said.

After some studious mixing and matching, Whiting's dry-fly capes have revolutionized fly tying with longer, stiffer and smaller hackle than anyone ever imagined. He also has developed a line of dyed rooster capes, hen capes and saddles and a naturally speckled hen pelt that he says is superior to grouse or partridge for imitating wet fly hackles and buggy nymph legs.

The roosters descended from the Hoffman line now sport hackles tiny enough to dress a No. 32 midge, which is about the size of a gnat.

The long saddle hackles that tiers once used only as wings on streamers have grown to 16-inch-long No. 14 quality dry-fly hackles. When the saddles grew so long that his birds were stepping on them, Whiting bred roosters with longer legs.

As the first geneticist to tinker with hackle, Whiting finds himself 11 years later controlling 70 to 80 percent of the world hackle market and wishing he had taken courses in business management. Along with solving genetics problems and raising 125,000 chickens a year, he must oversee orders for major firms such as Orvis and Cabela's. And he worries about international exchange rates, which could make his products too expensive for clients overseas.

Whiting Farms has grown to four chicken ranches in the Uncompahgre Valley, employing 45 people. When the phone rings, the caller could be a fly dealer in any of 48 states or from Japan, Australia or one of 34 countries Whiting feathers are exported to.

Now the round-the-clock crowing from Whiting's rooster barns sets up such a din that he urges workers to wear hearing protection when they enter.

The walls of the conference room in his office are papered with newspaper clippings about him, including one from the tabloid National Examiner with the sensational headline, "I Got Rich Turning Chicken Feathers Into Fishing Lures."

"That's my claim to shame," Whiting says, "to make it in that paper with Oprah."

Even though his business success was part of a plan, Whiting remains a bit dazed at having become cock of the walk so quickly. He credits the good fortune of incredible timing: Henry Hoffman was ready turn over his prize roosters to a young chicken-loving geneticist just as the movie A River Runs Through It was changing a tweedy pastime into an international craze.

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