Sylvester Nemes Soft-Hackles

[zen leecher]

I always enjoy Nemes flies and adaptations of them. 319 views should be the true measure of viewer enjoyment.

[crazy4oldcars]

William,
I am following this thread, and your thoughts, with keen interest. I love the flies you are showing us, but I will ever be the student, sitting (usually) quietly in the corner, soaking up what the others are saying.
Please do continue photographing and posting these original ties. I'm spellbound for the next installment.

Kirk

[Roadkill]

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,

This might also be tied to represent an Epeorus. The yellow emerging wings matched the body color on one of my favorite hatches on my home waters in Eastern Oregon.
http://www.west-fly-fishing.com/entomol ... uill.shtml

[daringduffer]

.... 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. .....

Could you please elaborate about this wrong way and wrong doings? The only book of his I have is "The Soft-Hackled Fly". You are making me curious. I believe that he is of much greater significance on your side of the pond. As much as I would love to read every book on fly fishing and tying ever written, I have put my money into other books of mostly older origin. Much like he did, I suppose.

W; I expect this topic to have a long life.

dd

[Smuggler]

Well, Nemes sincerely thought (and it's not his fault totally) that he really found a new technique in which to fool trout. But didn't realize that the flies and style of fishing that he became so enamored with was in practice for hundreds of years, as we all know. He really didn't know, simply from the lack of information back then. No cell phones no internet. Just books and magazine articles, word of mouth. We take for granted sometimes all the information that's available at our fingertips.

[daringduffer]

Thank you for the response. I have to tell you, though, that I'm old enough to still be overwhelmed by the internet. Can't get enough!!

dd

[Smuggler]

it's pretty vast.

[Mataura mayfly]

Willy, I am finding it a very interesting thread, very well presented and photographed. Your writings on your thoughts behind each entry kind of answer most any question I might have- because like Bill I have no real knowledge of the man nor the waters he fished and the patterns he was likely to be trying to cover. Then, like dd, "The Soft Hackled Fly" is the only volume of his I own.
So I do not really have the background, upbringing or geographic ideals an which to base objective critique or agreement,
Very much enjoying the time and effort you are putting in to the thread and the content within, especially the "used" flies and the less than perfectly tied honest fishing flies- not presentation flies, heck, some of them even look like I could have tied them!

[Spiderman]

Great pictures thanks for sharing.

[William Anderson]

Stefan, Sylvester Nemes took to the soft hackles which he found in Paul Young's fly shop and knew he had found a silver bullet as soon as he started fishing them. In his zeal he wanted to share his discovery with everyone and put together a wonderful book The Soft-Hackled Fly, in 1975. The premise was that the action of these flies was so alluring that matching hatches and following current trends was unnecessary, and touted the fact that he could manage with only the three Nemes standards the P&O, P&Y and P&G. He soon gained a great deal of information and made all the connections to Skues and the North Country spiders and did another beautiful job of enthusiastically detailing how to fish them and where and when. He included lots of historic material including copies of the Pritt plates and his pattern list. He also covers Edmonds and Lee. The Soft-Hackled Fly Addict, 1981 is a joy to read, contains a lot of sound and interesting information and as the follow-up to his first book, made a significant gain in the US adopting the soft-hackles as part of many angler's experience. Brilliant. I don't believe, I'd have to check, that he was aware of Leisenring and Hidy at this point, but later became aware of what they had done previously. Nemes' research and writing was done largely while he was living in Chicago (I am writing this from memory, and a poor one, I think Chicago. A city in the mid-west anyway) and was fortunate enough to make several trips out West to fish the most productive water at the most productive times. Once he retired and moved out West he began to understand how the flies were not the end all, and there was a place, but it was more nuanced than his initial presentation of the material. So he spent the Introduction of his third book, literally apologizing for the misconception put forward in the first two books and wanted to correct this in Soft-Hackle Fly Imitations, 1991. By this time he added to his love of the historic flies and their simplicity by suggesting an adaptation of the old flies to suit his water and hatches and stages and techniques. Imitations is full of material experiments and a real period of exploration pushing the soft-hackle beyond the historic texts and opened the possibilities. Chapters are laid out by species and patterns tied to behave in ways more the naturals in specific ways. I meant to get the quotes from the text, but this is the crux of the issue.

I managed to photograph and process a few more. As stated above, he remained an innovator and a tinkerer and I really don't have names for many of the flies. They look familiar to the prints in his books, but not identical by any stretch. I'm afraid I may have mis-labeled a couple on the images and I'll correct that if I find a more accurate name.