As I read the morning newspaper the other day I was amazed to discover that researchers in Scotland had successfully cloned an adult sheep for the first time. While this sort of scientific progress does present many troubling moral and ethical questions, it was not long before my one-track mind began considering its implications and possible applications for salmon fly dressing.

I know very little about genetic engineering but I am fairly certain that it is easier to clone birds than warm-blooded mammals. That being the case, it seems quite feasible that a scientist could take a few fibers from an antique spey fly, extract some Spey Cock DNA and insert it into a normal chicken egg. Voillal Real Spey Cock hackle and the regeneration of an extinct poultry variety!

Perhaps genetic engineering would work for other birds as well. By replacing a chicken's genes for feather development with those of its close cousin the Gray Junglefowl, it would be easy to obtain hundreds of jungle cocks! The same principle could also be applied to various types of rare pheasants and other birds which do not reproduce well in captivity. Wouldn't it be wonderful if DNA from Speckled Bustards could be inserted into turkey eggs! If this technology were further developed, suddenly plumage which had heretofore been very rare, expensive, or illegal would be readily available. It would also mean that certain individuals would no longer have a reason to capture wild birds in the jungles and smuggle them into the U.S.

Let's face reality, good materials are the key to good flies, and it becomes more difficult to obtain the proper feathers for dressing salmon flies with each passing year.

Genetic engineering and bird cloning is the only way I see to prevent classic salmon fly dressing from becoming a dying art.

Because the irrefutable laws of supply and demand are at work here, I believe that a gene jock with a love for salmon flies could make a ton of money by supplying the world with genetically engineered rare plumage. But let's just hope that person doesn't also have to clone Atlantic Salmon and Steelhead so we will have something to fish for!