Rooster feathers, or hackles, are used by anglers to tie into lightweight lures that are snatched up by eager fish.
But with an exploding trend in the beauty industry -- feather hair extensions -- hair stylists might be getting to the feathers faster than the fish.
The Merle Norman hair studio in Marysville has offered feather extensions for a month and a half, and stylists said the trend already is more popular than colored hair extensions.
Stacey Frederick and Jennifer Long, both stylists at Merle Norman, sport feather extensions themselves.
"It's just thinking outside the box in the hair industry," Frederick said.
Adding brightly-colored streaks to hair could potentially damage it during bleaching and dying processes, Long said, and many women are turned away from using colored hair extensions because they aren't natural-looking.
The procedure is simple: In less than five minutes, a stylist can take the feathers of your choice and loop them to several strands of hair using a small silicone bead. Options range from dyed rooster hackles in a variety of colors to long, white ostrich feathers -- two feathers for $15 or three for $25.
The extensions last up to four months and can be washed and styled with a blow dryer, flat iron or curling iron.
Buying feathers from wherever they can find them, Frederick and Long said they rely heavily on eBay. Frederick said she even has acquired a stash from a fisherman friend of hers.
Kathy Bielecki of Imlay City exhibits her jewelry at art shows around Southeast Michigan. This summer, she's started offering feathered hair extensions for a low price to visitors to her booth after seeing the trend explode in area salons. While hair salons in Birmingham offer hair feather extensions at prices upward of $30 per feather, Bielecki charges $12 per feather or $20 for two.
"The feathers are the hardest thing to find," she said.
Finefeatherheads.com -- a site the local Merle Norman stylists said they visit frequently -- is currently out of stock of all of its six-feather bundles.
On Monday, "hair feather" was a top trend on eBay.com with about 8,600 search results. Even searching "fly fishing feathers" on eBay yielded about 638 results advertising to fly fishermen and hair stylists.
Dan Finstad of the Michigan Fly Fishing Club in Livonia said fly fishing shops are making "outrageous premiums" by selling feathers to hair salons. One rooster hackle could yield four to five flies, Finstad said.
"Owners are reluctant to sell their entire inventory to beauty stylists," Finstad said, noting fly fishing stores are afraid of falling victim to the fad as well. "At the end of the day, they're still trying to make a profit."
John and Veronica Pinto, owners of Lakeside Fishing Shop in St. Clair Shores, said they've capitalized on the high demand for the feathers by selling their personal stock -- and they've all gone to beauticians.
"We've sold quite a few and not one of them to a fly fisherman," Veronica Pinto said. "I don't know how long that's going to last."
Several years ago, the store was flooded with demands from crafters for fishing tackle to make into jewelry.
Stylists point to Steven Tyler's May appearance on American Idol with nearly foot-long feathers in his hair as the beginning of the feather explosion.
Young celebrities such as Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus and Ke$ha all have been spotted sporting feather hair extensions in their hair, but the trend isn't popular just among young women. From school-aged girls to older women looking to stand out in a crowd, Long said the trend really has taken flight
