Three basic Soft Hackles that worked great for me last year!

[jcwillow777]

Last year was my first year fishing soft hackles, thanks to John Shaner! He has come to the Midwest Fly Fishing Expo at Macomb Community College in Michigan the past two years. He sparked my interest two years ago, by after his presentation last March I decided I would fish nothing but soft hackles this year, and I did. Well, except for the Trico hatch. I fished two flies most of the year. I tried three the first few times out, but after getting tangled up so many times, I stuck with two. For the most part I rarely got tangled, unless I tied the dropper longer than 4"-5". I hope he will be coming back to the Expo this March.

Anyhow the three that I used were the orange partridge, yellow partridge, and the green partridge. I came to the dance a little late, so I have no Pearsall Gossamer. So, I've been using Ephemera. This past year I have been reading everything I can get my hands on regarding Spiders and Soft Hackles. Think I read about 15 books. T.E. Pritt's North Country Flies and Brook & River Trouting by Edmonds and Lee were the first I read, thanks to the recommendations by John Shaner. There are a couple more books I would like to get, but since they are out of print and so crazy expensive, one is close to $2,500, I probably will never get a hold of them. I plan to experiment with other soft hackles this coming year and can't wait to get back on the river this spring when I open up my cottage. I am definitely hooked on soft hackles, and I'm never going back!

Sorry, my tying and pics are as good as many others here, but with more practice I'll get better.

Orange Partridge


Green Partridge


Yellow Partridge

[Trifly]

M

[Trifly]

M

[hankaye]

jcwillow777, Howdy;

As far as the olde classics go if their copyright has expired then you can download
them from a handy website https://archive.org/ It's easy enough for me to find
my way around there so I shouldn't think you would have any problems. Good Luck &
Happy Hunting!

hank

[letumgo]

jcwillow777,

If you are interested to play with some Pearsalls Gossamer silk, send me a private message with your email address. I can send you a couple colors to play around with.

Lovely spiders. I’m glad you’ve shared these with us. We share your passion.

[letumgo]

Trifly- what size are your flies? They look like 18 or maybe even smaller. Very impressive.

[tie2fish]

jc ~ Your tying and photos look pretty darn good to me, especially for someone fairly new to the game. Glad you have joined the soft hackle brigade; John has many convert notches on his vise .

[Old Hat]

JC - Those are great ties and the photos equally nice. Thanks for sharing your story about your entrance into tying and fishing spiders. For the tricos you can try the Reid's Assassin (my favorite) or the pattern William's Favorite. Both are easy to tie small and work great for that hatch.

[quote=ForumGhillie post_id=92077 time=1545659006 user_id=223

It makes me think we need a list of classic patterns with the alternative silk thread that matches the Pearsall Gossamer silk color from other silk companies.
[/quote]

I am working on that. Its already a bit costly as matching colors from a screen is frustrating. I have some Kimono100 and a box of Ephemera on the way.

[Trifly]

Trifly- what size are your flies? They look like 18 or maybe even smaller. Very impressive.

Size 24. Dai-riki 310 hook. Not too bright here. Tried to edit the post and messed it up. I too like the spiders JCwillow posted. Well done.

[jcwillow777]

Thanks for all of the kind comments.

As far as the books I'm looking for, they are still under copyright. One is The Guide to North Country Flies by Mike Harding, going for $2,269.75 and A Handbook of North Country Flies by W. S. Roger Fogg, going for $692.43 on Amazon. Both were listed at $99 for a while, I should have bought them then. Oh well...

Trifly - I can only image tying a 24! Nice job.

Hankaye - I found that archive site and google books. Thanks for mentioning it. I have downloaded about 100 books.

I found a list that Rob Smith posted in another forum comparing Pearsall to YLI. I edited the list and put them in numerical order. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to compare colors just from pics.

YLI No. Vintage Pearsall No.

201 = Scarlet(11a) – Bright Red
208 = Blue (7) – Ocean Blue
213 = Straw (2) – Pale Yellow
216 = Hot Orange (19) – Bright Orange
214 = Lemon Yellow (4) – Daffodil Yellow
231 = Gold (6A) – Bright Apricot
232 = Grey (9A) – Light Blue Grey
241 = Golden Olive (11) – Dull Gold? = Dk Claret(15) – ( 248 – Magenta or 267 – Burgandy )
244 = Purple (8) – Eggplant
258 = Claret (14) – Dark Purple
261 = Primrose (3) – Buttercup
258 = Claret (14) – Dark Purple
? = 6B? = Olive (16)
BLK = Black (9) – BLK
WHT6 = White (1) - WHT

I found a site that sells the YLI fairly reasonable, and has a boatload of colors.
https://ylicorp.com/products/silk-100-t ... 5612393166

oldhat - Thanks for mentioning your patterns. I'll check them out. I have been using the Trico pattern that Eric Stroup ties. It has worked very well for me, and extremely easy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk1C2GfDWb8

ForumGhillie - I have a cottage about 3 milse south of the AuSable river. Actually the first book I read on soft hackles was The Soft-Hackled Fly and Tiny Soft Hackles by Nemes. I got really geeked when I saw that he fished the same stretch of the AuSable that I regularly fish. (The North Branch, usually Dam 4)

letumgo - Thanks for the offer. I have been buying Ephemera here:
https://www.aaronmostojfeathers.com/sto ... spool.html
This is the best price I have found, $4.95 a spool, and reasonable shipping. I have 8 spools of most of the 14 colors available. After one purchase he sent me a free spool of Pearsall purple to play around with. It does look like it's nicer silk thread than the Ephemera. Since I can only do a comparison, I'll stick with what I have. Thanks for the offer though.

My only complaint with Ephemera is that it gets tangled on the spool sometimes as it comes off. I wrecked a couple of flies until I figured out how to deal with it. One plus is that the Ephemera comes in 100M spools.

I'm smoking a turkey for Christmas dinner, gotta go out and check it. Merry Christmas everyone!