Salar's Nemesis Redux
Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 9:39 am
Back in 2013, fellow member Dougsden let me borrow his copy of Sylvester Nemes' book Six Months in Scotland -- a telling of Nemes' adventures while spending half a year in northern Scotland living in a cottage hard by a noted salmon river. One of the more memorable parts of the book is a somewhat sketchy description of a moderately outlandish fly he concocted specifically to see if he could actually catch a salmon with it.
There is a listing of the components in the text for what he named "Salar's Nemesis" and in some copies of the book there is a photo of the fly on the facing page. After reading the book (thank you, Doug), I naturally had to tie a version just to see how it would look, despite the fact that I did not have all of the exact materials at that time. It didn't look too bad to me then, and I did post it on the Forum.
Recently the author of another fine soft hackle forum (Alan Petrucci's "Small Stream Reflections") did a couple of posts about this fly, including his efforts to downsize it from a salmon fly to a trout fly and use it to fish some of the excellent brook trout streams that he frequents. Well, as it turns out, the wild brook trout he seeks out really like it. Being the shameless copycat that I am, I decided to give this pattern another go, this time tying it on a much smaller hook with the intentions of trying it out on brown trout. Here's the result:
Hook: Daiichi 1760, Size 12
Thread: Pearsall's Gossamer #19, hot orange
Tail: Golden pheasant tippets
Rib: Flat gold tinsel, small
Body: Alec Jackson silk floss, orange
Thorax: Seal dyed "Tangerine" in split thread
Cheeks: Jungle cock nails
Hackle: Saddle hackle, fluor orange
Head: Thread wraps coated with Griff's Thin (2 coats) and then Veniard's Cellire #1 Clear Varnish (3 coats)
There is a listing of the components in the text for what he named "Salar's Nemesis" and in some copies of the book there is a photo of the fly on the facing page. After reading the book (thank you, Doug), I naturally had to tie a version just to see how it would look, despite the fact that I did not have all of the exact materials at that time. It didn't look too bad to me then, and I did post it on the Forum.
Recently the author of another fine soft hackle forum (Alan Petrucci's "Small Stream Reflections") did a couple of posts about this fly, including his efforts to downsize it from a salmon fly to a trout fly and use it to fish some of the excellent brook trout streams that he frequents. Well, as it turns out, the wild brook trout he seeks out really like it. Being the shameless copycat that I am, I decided to give this pattern another go, this time tying it on a much smaller hook with the intentions of trying it out on brown trout. Here's the result:
Hook: Daiichi 1760, Size 12
Thread: Pearsall's Gossamer #19, hot orange
Tail: Golden pheasant tippets
Rib: Flat gold tinsel, small
Body: Alec Jackson silk floss, orange
Thorax: Seal dyed "Tangerine" in split thread
Cheeks: Jungle cock nails
Hackle: Saddle hackle, fluor orange
Head: Thread wraps coated with Griff's Thin (2 coats) and then Veniard's Cellire #1 Clear Varnish (3 coats)
