Partridge and Green

Hook:		14-18
Thread:		Green Pearsall’s gossamer thread
Body:		Tying thread
Thorax:		Black and brown hare’s face (optional)
Hackle:		Gray Partridge
		In the first edition of The Soft-Hackled Fly (1975), Sylvester Nemes includes a Partridge and Green with and without a fur thorax. The original dressing, no. 2, calls for: “body: Green silk floss hackle: Gray partridge,” whereas the Partridge and Green and Fur Thorax is dressed “body: 2/3’s, green silk floss thorax: Black and brown hare’s face hackle: Gray partridge.” Dave Hughes also includes the Partridge and Green in the first edition of Wet Flies (1995), attributing it to Nemes. He dresses it using “Thread: Green Pearsall’s Gossamer silk. Hackle: Gray Partridge. Body: Working silk, or green Marabou silk floss. Thorax: Hare’s mask fur, or #7 Hare’s Ear Plus, tan (thorax optional).”

This dressing follows Paul H. Young’s suggestion to use a dyed quill body, but substitutes a Blue Winged Olive dyed turkey biot for the body. It adds the hare's ear thorax that Hughes and Nemes recommend.

In Two Centuries of Soft-Hackled Flies (2004), Nemes attributes his first encounter with soft hackles to Paul H. Young, whose self-published book Making and Using the Fly and Leader (1938) includes a discussion of Partridge Spiders dressed in green, orange, and yellow. Young notes that the “Body may be ‘dubbed’ or made of dyed quill which is excellent.”