The Original Recipe
In the decades after the publication of Leisenring and Hidy’s work on flymphs, the trend in North American fly tying and fly-fishing was very largely towards dry flies and ever more realistic patterns. The impressionistic soft-hackled wets were relegated to a back seat by all but a dedicated minority, but among those who kept the faith was angler, flytier and writer Sylvester Nemes, who has done more than anyone else to keep the soft hackle alive and bring its qualities into focus in the USA. Syl’s Midge is a superb example of the simplicity and efficacy of this style of fly.
INFLUENTIAL WRITING
Nemes’ first book, The Soft-Hackled Fly, was published in 1975, and in it he traced the whole history of this genre, especially the North Country flies that Pritt had written about, as well as showing how modern materials and tying methods could be applied to them. The wealth of information and his easy writing style won him and the soft-hackled fly many followers, and signaled the start of a swing away from the quest for entomological exactness and towards a more relaxed approach to fly impersonation.
In 1991 he published Soft-Hackled Fly Imitations, and in this book, which looked at matching specific North American hatches, he gave instructions for many of his own patterns, including Syl’s Midge. His other works include The Soft-Hackled Fly Addict (1993), Two Centuries of Soft-Hackled Flies (2003) and Spinners (2006). Also in 2006, an expanded version of his first book, now entitled The Soft-Hackled Fly and Tiny Soft Hackles: A Trout Fisherman’s Guide, appeared, more highly illustrated and with more patterns, including ten chapters on tying midges and other tiny flies.
“I have been called evangelistic by some anglers in my attempts to establish the soft hackle as a true, American angling form. I hope this book continues the crusade.” Sylvester Nemes, The Soft-Hackled Fly Addict
Sylvester Nemes was stationed in Hampshire, England, in 1944 and there he fished soft hackles on the famous River Test. Back in the USA he developed his own patterns for the Madison, Missouri and Yellowstone rivers.
In terms of both the materials and the method of tying, this fly could hardly be simpler. Looking somewhat like a bulbous spider pattern, Syl’s Midge has a body of twisted peacock herl that keeps the barbs of the soft Hungarian partridge hackle pushed out and able to waft and pulse in the current as the fly floats downstream. It is designed to be fished in the surface layers “under the hatch,” in the phrase coined by Ernest Herbert “Polly” Rosborough in his book Tying and Fishing the Fuzzy Nymphs, published in 1965. His theory was that even when adult insects are on the surface, fish will often more readily take nymphs and drowned or crippled adults beneath the surface, and the experience of many soft-hackled devotees supports this.
Although this fly represents the tiny midge, Nemes himself maintained that there was no need to tie it in any sizes smaller than a #16, as this had proved just as effective as a #22, which is a great deal harder to tie and less likely to produce a hook-up.
Harking Back
In his supplement to Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler entitled Being Instructions How To Angle for a Trout or Grayling in a Clear Stream, Charles Cotton gives the ingredients for flies that are to be fished in May and says, “There is also in this month a fly called the Peacock-Fly; the body made of a whirl of a peacock’s feather, with a red head, and wings of a mallard’s feather.” If a soft breast feather is intended, this would be a similar fly to Syl’s Midge.
BROADER APPLICATIONS
Sylvester Nemes’ has not been a lone voice over the last 40 years. Writers such as W.S. Roger Fogg, Dave Hughes and Allen McGee are among the many who have lent their support to the cause of re-examining the history of the soft hackle and developing new patterns, sometimes in combination with new materials.
Anglers and fly tyers from many different areas of the sport have been adding vitality to their creations by extending the use of soft hackles into flies designed for everything from largemouth bass to saltwater species such as bonefish. Large versions of North Country spider patterns have long been used by steelheaders in the Pacific Northwest, and Loren Williams’ Steelhead Pat, which has a hackle of gray and brown Hungarian partridge, takes both Atlantic salmon and Great Lakes steelhead.
Sylvester Nemes was a master of fly tying, as these two flies that he tied himself demonstrate. They are the Peacock Caddis, with its unusual backswept soft hackle, and the Dun Gold.
THE SOFT-HACKLED DRY
Dry flies are traditionally wound with a cock hackle, either around the hook shank or in a parachute form, and the stiff fibers help the fly to float, act to stabilize the fly and give the impression of feet on the water’s surface. They also hold the fly in the surface film and help it to move with the current, reducing unnatural drag. The one things that those fibers do not do is look like the flexible, mobile legs of a living insect.
A fly called the Jingler, reputedly a 19th-century Scottish pattern, solves this by combining a dry fly cock hackle and all its useful qualities with a soft Hungarian partridge hackle. The partridge, tied in with the concave side facing forwards, is wound in front of the dry fly hackle or through it so that it helps to support the soft fibers. The partridge hackle fibers are slightly longer than those of the cock hackle and when the fly is resting on the water these “legs” move in the current. The effect is that of a mayfly emerger or dun trapped or crippled and struggling in the surface film, and the fly certainly appears to possess a key trigger that elicits a response from the fish.
The Jingler, which has burst onto the UK scene from obscurity in the last decade, is commonly tied as a March Brown with a dubbed hare’s ear body, or as a Large Dark Olive with a thread or quill body. The English angler and guide Jon Barnes, who is a strong advocate of spider patterns, ties a version of the Jingler that has a CDC wing. His Soft Hackle Dry Fly represents small to medium mayflies and caddis flies.
