THE SOFT-HACKLED FLY. By Sylvester Nemes. Limited Edition.

(1975) 1988 reprint. 8vo (157 x 236mm). Ppiv,130. Colour and b/w photographs, bibliography. Burgundy leather boards, spine titled in gilt. Edition limited to 180 copies, signed and numbered by the led a fisherman like myself to entirely give up the use of all other sunk flies in fishing for trout? What special appeal does it have? What does it represent or imitate, if anything at all? What makes it so universal that sometimes it works just as well during a hatch as without one, and fishes equally well on almost any trout stream in the country? English writers, by the score ...praised the soft-hackles. They were classified in many lists as general flies, meaning that they had no counterparts in real insect life. It was a good fly, they said, but they didn't know why". "Everyone who casts flies for trout, whether eastern browns or western steelhead, has a favorite system, and it's hard to get a fly fisherman to change his ways. Because the soft-hackle (a curious type of wingless wet fly fished with a floating line) is relatively unknown in America, Sylvester Nemes' book provokes both controversy and a challenge". Sylvester Nemes has spent the last three decades enthusing to his fellow North American fly fishermen about the soft-hackled fly. In doing so he has created an interesting and useful new byway in the literature of the North Country fly. Nemes' use of the Past Tense in the first quote, above, is a bit odd, as living English authors on the subject abound. A search of our website with "North Country fly tying" will establish this point.