Partridge and Yellow and Fur Thorax

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Sylvester Nemes Partridge and Yellow and Fur Thorax soft hackle.

Since I was in a soft hackle mood from tying a few Starling and Purple soft hackle flies, I decided to pull out a few books and find another soft hackle fly to tie.

Sylvester Nemes is well-known for his books on tying and fishing soft hackle flies. The Partridge and Yellow and Fur Thorax fly can be found in The Soft-Hackled Fly Addict (1981). It is Nemes’ second book, the first titled The Soft-Hackled Fly (1975) and is an improvement over the original. If you only purchase one book, The Soft-Hackled Fly Addict is the one to choose.

Nemes provides a brief history of soft hackle flies from the two books he considers the bible of soft-hackled flies – Pritt’s North Country Flies and Edmond and Lee’s Brook and River Trouting.

North Country Flies by T.E. Pritt (1886) is the second edition of the original Yorkshire Trout Flies (1885). Pritt writes in the Preface of the second book the “…text remains identical with that of the first edition.” The title was changed because the flies could be used beyond the Yorkshire streams. 

You can find a FREE download to both of these books on my page Links to Free Old Fly Fishing and Fly Tying Books.

Twenty soft hackle fly patterns are listed in The Soft-Hackled Fly Addict and are original fly patterns for the US. Nemes does a great job explaining how to tie and fish these simple, but effective flies.

The fly pattern recipe for Nemes’ Partridge and Yellow and Fur Thorax can be found on page 100 and is listed as follows:

Body:  2/3’s yellow silk floss

Thorax:  Light brown hare’s face

Hackle:  Brown or gray partridge

I used the Alec Jackson North Country Trout Fly hook #13. The body is Pearsall’s Gossamer silk thread.

Enjoy…go fish!