Sylvester Nemes Soft-Hackles

[UC Steve]

Really like the green drake emerger. Makes perfect sense. Good example of a winged flymph. The colors are right for an emerger. Western green drake duns sport a bright green body while emerging & newly emerged, darkening quickly as they dry.

[William Anderson]

Two, apparently PMD wet flies. Close enough to something historic that I looked around for a pattern he might have been using, but as far as I can tell it's just a good PMD imitation. All the makings of a Greenwell's Glory, except the hackle is off and the silk isn't waxed. The bones of a historic pattern adapted to his local water. The second is my favorite in the whole collection. Just a beautifully tied simple, sparse wet fly. Nearly a Poult Bloa, but not more on point for his local hatch.

[Roadkill]

Here is my previously posted Nemes P&O inside my old copy of The Soft-Hackled Fly.

[William Anderson]

Bill that's a pristine example of his style. From his books I got the impression he liked as many spiders with a thorax of dubbing as without. I have the different P&O's and they all have a light hare thorax, but the P&G and P&Y are without. Interesting those without the dubbed thorax all feature that very light gray partridge and those with have a darker marked brown partridge hackle. That probably doesn't hold true often but seeing your fly reminded me. One the one hand, I get the impression he plays fast and loose with his patterns, but I'm many ways he has really dialed in his fly design to match his water. More examples to follow.

[William Anderson]

Things start to get sketchy from here on. Some of them are identifiable in a general way, and some looks like they might have fallen out of my box and no discernible connection. Here's a productive looking fly, and I might be able to say it might be, or could be...but I really don't know. It's a good looking fly. He probably had something very specific in mind.

[William Anderson]

This I believe is a Green Drake Soft Hackle, the hackle dyed the same intense yellow as the deer hair shown in the earlier Green Drake fly. This is a #12.

[William Anderson]

So an instance where Nemes was actually fishing an established UK pattern without modifications. Happens to be an exceptional pattern. The head of peacock came undone on this one, one of the issues he's had in lots of the samples I have either peacock or pheasant coming unraveled, but this is still a nice example. More important thing is not the tying skill, but what we know of his enthusiasm for all things SH and what he chose to tie to his tippet while knee deep in cold water. I really like this pattern in particular.


Dark Moorgame Soft Hackle Spider, tied by Nemes.



Based on the views to this thread, I know there are a few who enjoy seeing his original patterns. Somehow I thought for all the Nemes fans we have on the forum and who have read his books, I thought there would be more interest in the flies that came out of his stream boxes, but the engagement doesn't show that and I wonder why. These things happen, not everything is interesting to everyone, or the timing is off at times when a thread is created that is ripe with potential and it doesn't elicit the kind of interaction that might be expected, that happens often very naturally. Sometimes the best posts are seemingly average in their premise and evolve into something very interesting. I just wonder if this thread is really of little interest. It genuinely is just a curiosity on my part.

I feel at a disadvantage since his waters were in Montana and out West and my experience on his waters is limited, but many of you might recognize easily the connections between these patterns and the hatch or fly behavior he was going for based on what you know of those waters. Is anyone interested in his material substitutions or have insight as to why they might prove more effective. In my mind, he was truly one of us. Despite his literary success, he was a tinkerer, a minor innovator, but importantly he championed a style of fly and on stream technique that had not been explored for quite a long time, or at least was done quietly. He was in fact addicted, I can relate to that and he wanted very much to share his passion, especially at a time when tying and design was going in a different direction. He's a hero to some, a curiosity to others. In my mind, he would have been an engaged member of our own community, relishing the kind of pattern exploration that we enjoy. One foot in the historic side of the flies and another in his present water, moving on from tradition. I find him especially relatable, including the parts where he oversteps out of enthusiasm. I'm guilty of that, and I'm not alone. It's fun. Addictive. We have a brilliant community here and while it covers much of the PH, JL and Skues material, it serves us daily in our own time on the water. I believe he would been a happy member of this gang. So It's interesting for me, knowing so much about what he was thinking about from his books, to see his fishing flies from his stream box. I hope you're as interested.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Nemes, maybe a funny antidote if you fished with him or know him. It would be interesting to hear suggestions you might make for him. Many are crude and many are just very elegant, tied with the skill we would expect from someone of his stature in these circles. For one, I might suggest a touch of head cement to the head before wrapping a pheasant tail or peacock head, as many have come unraveled before the bodies were chewed or hackles gnarled.

I will continue to share what I have, I hope you'll do the same, but these patterns are interesting and if you have any questions or comments it would add to my understanding of the collection.

w

[William Anderson]

These two flies are interesting to me because he has taken a very old pattern, a Spring Black or Black Gnat type pattern, likely a crow herl twisted with purple silk like Leisenring's Black Gnat, including the starling hackle, but added a full length stone fly wing, very sparse and highly impressionistic. Especially the second fly where two simple herls of pheasant tail are tied in pairs, so delicate to represent the wing, sunk and bedraggled to be fished wet. Small innovation but probably born of his time on the water. I don't know if there is a precedent for this, but I know nearly all wet flies prior to this were tied based on a strict proportion for the body and wing, no matter the intended insect. Just a basic formula with color changes, but this winged wet is something different. I wonder if he saw this somewhere, and when he might have tied it. Did he depend on this fly for years during the early stonefly hatches, or was it an experiment that remained in his box because he passed on it while fishing. I wonder about that with many of his flies. I have flies that I pass on again and again until I finally take them out.

Sylvester Nemes Early Stone 1


Sylvester Nemes Early Stone 2


w

[Smuggler]

Nemes was and forever will be a hero for many people for the very reason you stated, William. He experimented with these old patterns and found great success with them while the tying industry was becoming what is it today. I for one am thankful for what his books. Sure he went about it in the wrong way at first but realized his wrong doings. People make mistakes, were not perfect. He's definitely one of us, through and through. A lucky man in the sense of where he got to experiment with these great flies.

I love these pictures William. Keep it up.

[tie2fish]

William ~ Please do not think that lack of posted responses to the "tied by Nemes" thread equates to a lack of interest. I find these patterns intriguing, some for their simple beauty and others for the improvisational skills he used when adding or modifying components. But I know very little about Nemes as a fisherman and the water he frequented, and feel it would be presumptive to guess at what he had in mind in some cases.
What I do find comforting to my way of thinking is that he was obviously not bound by tradition to the point where he limited his fishing flies to just duplications of existing patterns. Believe me, I understand respect for tradition and the challenges involved in using only patterns that were developed hundreds of years ago, but fishing conditions were significantly different then, as were some of the aquatic insects that flies of the period were designed to suggest. So I give Nemes credit for his experimentation. After all, the fact that Jim Leisenring carefully studied the insect life of whatever waters he was fishing and modified his flies to suit what he observed speaks well to the value of change and improvisation.