I think you need Flytyer for this one....

 

Check out this site:


http://www.farnham.ws/Syd Glasso.htm

 

I have been to Stu farnham's site, but he doesn't have all the patterns.Thanks anyway, Caddis

 

The bottom line is that as far as I know, there is no complete list of Glasso's patterns. There is a simple reason for this: He tied variations of his flies for friends and fishing acquaintances and he also tied flies in colors he didn't fish for friends because they asked him to. For example, he tied his SOL DUC with yellow hackle for his own fishing; however, I've seen 2 of them that were tied with hot orange hackle that were tied for a friend of his from British Columbia. I've also seen 3 SOL DUC SPEYs that were tied with hot orange hackle for the same friend from British Columbia. Another example: he tied the POLAR SHRIMP is at least 3 variations: hot orange hackle with hot orange body; red hackle with hot orange body; and cerise hackle with cerise body and all 3 variations used GP breast feather for a throat or face hackle.

Another example is the WHITE HERON Stu Farnham lists on his site. This is the only place I've seen this fly listed and it was an authenticated tied-by- Glasso fly that had come from a friend of his who lived in British Columbia-I suspect the same friend he tied the orange hackled SOL DUCs for.

At any rate, as far as I know, these are the flies he tied for his own fishing: ORANGE HERON, BROWN HERON, GOLD HERON, SILVER HERON, his BLACK HERON, SOL DUC, SOL DUC DARK, SOL DUC SPEY, POLAR SHRIMP (in the 3 variations I mentioned in the first paragraph), his friend Dick Wentworth's QUILLYUTE (which was really nothing more than Dick substituting teal (or pintail or gadwal) as hackle for the grey heron on the ORANGE HERON, and GREY BODY ROYAL COACHMAN (this is what he called it, he simply used dark grey dubbing or floss for the red center section of the body of a Royal Coachman)-he used this for summer/fall fishing in #4 . I've been told that he also fished a GREY WULFF and ORANGE BODY ROYAL WULFF as skaters. As far as I know, he quit fishing his COURTESAN after he developed the ORANGE and BROWN HERONS.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if someone has a Glasso tied spey fly that substituted purple hackle for the yellow of the SOL DUC or possibly a PURPLE HERON because someone he knew asked him to. You also have to be careful because there are tyers who have developed (or more properly tied) a spey fly in the Glasso style that the tyer called a Glasso style fly, but that others simply call a Glasso spey in whatever color it was. These are flies that were not tied or originated by Glasso, but were tied as a tribute to him that folks other than the tyer ascribed to Glasso. For example, I've seen Bob Veverka's PURPLE SOL DUC credited to Glasso, when Veverka was very clear that it was his (Veverka's) fly and that is was developed after Glasso had died. Another example of this is Dick Wentworth's MR GLASSO, which was tied without imput from Glasso as a way for Dick to honor his mentor, fly tying teacher, and friend.

If anyone knows of a definitive list of his patterns, I'd be most grateful to have it. But I seriously doubt such a list exist because of the things I mentioned above.

 

Wow, thanks Flytyer for all the insite into Glasso. You answered a lot of questions I had. Great post, Thanks again, Pat

 

this is what your looking for

Hey if your looking for all of Glassos flies there an older book called steelhead FlyFishing and flies by Tey Combs published by Salmon Trout Steelheader on July 4 1976. Dick Wentworth told me that it was the only book that they put all there patterns in and that they tied.The book has a summer steelhead across the frount and in the book its black and white except for the fly pattern section in the middle. its worth checking out trust me

 

olypen,

I know this book well and own a copy of it. I also know Trey Combs rather well and have met Wentworth multiple times. Unfortunately, you are mistaken in thinking that Trey's book from 1976 has all the Glasso flies in it. Yes, it has all the Glasso spey flies in it (including the Quileyute which was a collaboration between Glasso and Wentworh in which Dick simply substituted teal for the heron used in the Orange Heron and produced a fly with a very different look) that Glasso fished with. But there are other flies, such as his variations of the Polar Shrimp, that he tied and fished that are not pictured. Nor is the Grey Body Royal Coachman pictured, which Glasso used for summer fishing in low, clear water. Nor is the White Heron or the orange hackled variant of the Sol Duc Spey pictured. This is why it is not a comprehensive listing or picture of Glasso's patterns.

Hence, the reason I made the long post above that I did in order to explain why it is doubtful there is a comprehensive list of his patterns, or for that matter a comprehensive set of photos, of Glasso's flies.

 

i wish someone would go for it and do it right with a hard cover, full documentary about Glasso and his patterns. It is overdue in my opinion. Then i could stop bugging flytyer with random pm's!!!:chuckle:

 

I think about Glasso every time I fish the Nisqually at Muck Creek. That's the hole where Syd Glasso caught his first steelhead as a boy, on a gob of eggs and a cane pole. His Dad was managing the hatchery that used to be there. You can see the remains of it still.

 

To add to Russ's comments. In my mind Mr. Glasso didn't create a number of new patterns but more importantly, created a whole new style of Spey fly. He moved Spey fly tying into completely new directions by tying in feather wings in the same manner as bronze mallard wings. This allowed for the use of a wing material that could far more boldly present colors in the fly. The wing of the Spey fly is the dominant eye catching feature. While bronze mallard feathers can be dyed they only show hints of the dye color within the very somber dark brown natural color pattern. By using whole hackle feathers, Mr. Glasso was able to present the dominant portion of the fly in any color he chose. Thus, hot and/or fluorescent, bright, dark, somber, and any combination of these colors became possible. Secondly, by using a wing material that has more movement in the individual fibers of the whole feathers his style of Spey fly has more movement overall. The wings when properly tied are tied exactly as a more traditional bronze mallard wing to form a shape similar to an upside down boat hull, but they can be any color or combination of colors the tyer wishes. I believe that in this new style Mr. Glasso moved fly tying forward to a form of Spey fly that blends the traditional Spey fly form and the traditional PNW hair wing steelhead fly colors. His flies are certainly well and beautifully tied. They provide a level of mastery for the rest of us to aim for. But more importantly they leave a legacy of creative adaptation allowing for modern color schemes and life-like movement to be added to a most beautiful style of fly.

 

but more importantly, created a whole new style of Spey fly. He moved Spey fly tying into completely new directions by tying in feather wings in the same manner as bronze mallard wings. .

Not a big deal but Sid Glasso only identified one of his flies as being a "spey fly", the Sol Duc Spey. His style of floss and seal body is more like the Irish classics that used a jointed body. Comparing a standard Sol Duc and the Sol Duc Spey you can see the spey is hackled all the way through same as a true spey fly. I have heard his style referred to as contemporary spey, for me, not so much. In Trey Combs book you will find Sid's patterns tied by him. They truly look nothing like a spey fly, with the exception of the Sol Duc Spey. You could say Sid's tying was influenced by the old classics. Yes Sid's flies differed from the classic hair wings of the day, and yes he did develop his own style, but i would not call it spey or spey tying. Sid Glasso died long before "spey", the spey thing did not get started till the 90s. Glasso tied "steelhead" flies that have become part of the steelhead tradition. They are classic steelhead flies, not spey flies. As I said not a big deal, I just sometimes think we tend to use spey a bit too much and it has diluted much of the steelheading heritage.

 

What should a person expect to pay for Syd Glasso flies mounted in plaques?

 

I believe there is book coming out on Mr Glasso, I read it here so it must be true :chuckle:

 

How much a verified, tied by Syd Glasso fly is worth mounted in a frame: the short answer is how much a person is willing to pay for it. I have one verified tied by Syd Glasso fly that was a gift from a now dead friend. I wouldn't sell it, so the price can't be high enough. I can tell you there aren't all that many of the flies actually tied by Glasso floating around, he has been dead since the 1970's, is a world-famous tyer, developed very desirable flies, and most who have a fly or flies tied by him won't get rid of them. Therefore, expect to pay a few hundred dollars for one.

Rifflehitch,

Dave McNeese has been working on a book on Glasso both the man and his flies for about the last 5 years. Last year he told me he thought he might have it ready for the publisher something after the middle of this year, but wouldn't guarantee that he would. So if we're lucky, Dave will get it finished and off to the publisher this year. If we're not lucky, he won't.

 

if this cat could fish as well as they say he could, i bet the variations on his "patterns" were more than the patterns themselves. how could a true fisherman settle on just a couple patterns when there are so many possibilities and so many picky fish?

that being said, good luck in your search

 

Unfortunately, Dave McNeese doesn't have a publisher yet. I spoke to him for a while at the Atlantic Salmon Fly International today in Renton, WA. Dave was going to have Stackpole publish it, but since they have been bought by another company, Dave's the new company wants Dave to not do a historical book on Glasso the man (at least the little that is know about him), friends that Dave was able to talk to before they died, his correspondence with Glasso (although he never met Glasso in person), and a many of his flies that he was able to get photos of. Dave is also going to include info on steelhead fly fishing in Washington State that he was able to find on what folks were fishing (fly tackle and flies) from the time Glasso started to fish for steelhead as a boy up until the time of his death in the 1970's. The new owner of what was Stackpole wants Dave to include how to tie Glasso flies and Dave is trying very hard not to do that. Therefore, he is looking for another publisher. So it looks like the book is probably not getting published this year. Too bad.

Although it is true that Glasso only used the name "spey" in the name of one of his flies (as Marty pointed out the SOL DUC SPEY), he (according to Dick Wentworth, Alec Jackson, Walt Johnson, Steve Gobin, and Trey Combs all of whom knew Glasso well) referred to most of his steelhead flies as "spey flies". This includes the ORANGE HERON, BROWN HERON, BLACK HERON, SILVER HERON, SOL DUC SPEY, GOLD HERON, COURTESAN, and sometimes POLAR SHRIMP. I say sometimes on the POLAR SHRIMP because he tied it as a spey fly and as a hackle tip winged Atlantic Salmon Fly. The only written record we have of something that Glasso wrote, is a letter that he wrote about how he developed his spey flies (that is what he called them in the article) that was heavily edited and published in the Oregon chapter of the Federation of Fly Fishers newsletter in the early 1970's. McNeese has told me this letter was 15 pages long! I'd love to read it. Dave is going to have it in his book on Glasso. So Glasso wrote a 15 page letter and it was edited down to 3 pages for the newsletter. And in the edited version of the letter that was published, Glasso referred to his COURTESAN and ORANGE HERON as spey flies that he developed from his earlier GRIZZLY ORANGE, which was tied with longish grizzly hackle and non-tented wing. He said in the article/letter that when a student of his gave him a dead blue heron skin, he went to work using the heron hackle and the ORANGE HERON was the result.

Glasso was very aware of Atlantic Salmon flies and how to tie them. He was tying them before he developed the COURTESAN and ORANGE HERON. He had Tavener's book and Pryce-Tannant's book as guides. So he was very aware of what he was doing when he called the COURTESAN and ORANGE HERON, etc. spey flies. He even said in the letter that was published in the newsletter that he simply used normal steelhead colors to make a series of spey flies for winter steelhead because the books said spey flies were fished in "fast, riffly water, and they were sunk to depts. Also keep in mind that there are spey flies that used two part bodies and Pryce-Tannat and Taverner both listed them in their books, so it is no surprise to me that Glasso did so with his spey flies. Also, Glasso tied the dubbed portion of his spey flies rather thin and sparse, just like the old spey flies. Unfortunately, over the last 30 years far too many folks use too much dubbing that is too thick and then pick it out. Glasso didn't tie them this way. His flies were sleek, sparse, and had thin dubbing that was not picked-out. In fact, he split his floss to make a dubbing loop and spun the first portion of dubbing on just one leg of the split floss with very sparse dubbing (i.e. he used one leg of the split floss in the manner of a Catskill style trout dry fly's dubbed body) and then did the same with the rest of the split floss "dubbing loop, but with a bit more dubbing added. He did not insert dubbing into a dubbing loop, his bodies were tightly dubbed and sparse. And because of the way the started the dubbing at the transition from floss to dubbing on the body, the transition has almost no dubbing and is barely thicker than floss alone.

I really want to see McNeese's book finally make it into print because it will put to rest a lot of the mis-information that has been bandied about on Glasso. Keep in mind, that very little is known about his growing up years. We know is dad ran a salmon hatchery and he used salmon eggs to catch steelhead. We don't know when he started to fly fish or fly fish for steelhead. We know he started experimenting with spey flies in the 1950's, but we don't know when in the 1950's. We know he sometimes painted the shank of his hooks white and sometimes put a tinsel underbody on them so the florescent orange floss didn't darker and kept its "glow".

His SOC DUC and SOC DUC DARK are not spey flies, and were always tied in the hackle tip featherwing Atlantic Salmon fly style. As far as I know and have been able to find out over the last 25 years, these two flies were never tied as spey flies by Glasso.

And as I mentioned a few years ago in my first post on this, Glasso tied and fished what he called ROYAL COACHMAN-GREY BODY, ROYAL COACHMAN-ORANGE BODY, and the standard ROYAL COACHMAN-RED BODY for summer steelhead as both wet and dry flies with white (and sometimes grey on the grey-bodied variation, not always, just sometimes) for summer steelhead and these were tied on $6-#10 hooks. And the dry fly versions were always snelled by him before he tied the fly.

 

My first post (2007) on spey pages was an orange fly I identified as a spey fly. Flytyer response was:

It is very nicely tied.

Since you asked for critiques, in my opinion: 1) I would start the oval tinsel tip almost even with the hook point; 2) I would have the G.P. topping tail lower, so it wasn't higher than the rear edge of the wing; 3) I would either have the floss body section make up half of the body (which is how Syd Glasso did his), or make the floss section shorter (which starting the tinsel tip at the hook point would automatically do) as a true tag; and 4) I would make the wing narrower. These are pretty minor things and really only reflect my opinion on what I think a spey fly should look like.

My thought was the fly was tied well and needed no adjustments for the type of fishing I prefer. The fly had already proven to be a producer and I had confidence in the style. My mistake was calling it a spey fly. What I have learned over the years is I myself had miss used "spey" as an identifier. I called the fly a spey fly, when in fact it did not represent the attributes of a true Spey Fly. I was not trying to follow a known pattern or style. Flytyer's critique opened my eyes to my flowed thinking and motivated me to do some old school research. What I have learned is, a spey fly follows a very defined pattern. It is true there were other fly patterns developed for the River Spey that failed to follow the basic pattern of the Spey Fly, but I can not find any reference to the patterns as being lumped in with Old Spey Flies. I have developed a number of flies that produce well on the Deschutes, are they Deschutes Flies or are they steelhead flies tied for the Deschutes. It might be just me, but i think the disconnect has been created by the PNW Steelhead fly tying community. Sid Glasso may have called all of his flies "spey flies", but doing so could be considered as a misdirection. Sid Glasso's patterns, with the exception of the Sul Doc Spey, were not tied for the River Spey nor our they tied after the manner of a Spey Fly. The influence may have come from flies tied for the River Spey, but lumping them all into "spey" as a category is like lumping all big flies into the Intruder category. As I said it is no big deal, call it what you want. You can also call me old school, I use a two handed rod, two handed casts and steelhead flies. Some day I might go spey fishing, but I would first have to learn where to go to catch speys. Just a little humor form an old fart.

With that said, Sig Glasso's has influenced a segment of my tying. The feather winged flies with burnt hackle through a jointed body of floss/tinsel and seal I tie as well as my Red Wing Gaddy all came from Glasso. I do set my wings differently but its easy to see where I got my inspiration. I am very grateful for the likes of Sid Glasso as well as all the pioneers of steelhead fishing and fly tying.

 

Some day I might go spey fishing, but I would first have to learn where to go to catch speys.

Bah-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!
Finally ... somebody said what I have been thinking all these years :hihi:

Thanks for that Marty, you made my day


Mike

 

Marty,

As usual, you posted a thoughtful and informative response to my last post. This is one of the things that sets speypages apart from other forums on fly fishing: The usually gentlemanly and informative way folks respond to one another. And like you, Glasso (and many of the great Classic Atlantic Salmon Fly tyers) have greatly influenced my tying.

I, like yourself and Mike, would also like to know where I might go to catch a "spey". I use 2-handed rods and spey casts for nearly all my steelhead fishing (which is 95% or more of my fishing), but I'll be darned I've not been able to find out where these illusive "spey" are located.

Finally, thank you for adding some good natured humor into our collective days.

 

History lesson folks, pay attention!!!! Great stuff flytyer and Marty a big thank you both!!!!!

 

Nice update; thanks Flytyer. BTW, Syd died in 1984, not the 1970s. No sense rushing something as terminal as death. I'm fairly certain of the timing because I was on the Wenatchee River one October day, and here comes Mark Canfield tooling along in Syd's old white Porsche. He shared the news with me that Syd had finally given in to the cancer he was battling for a while.

It seems like it was around that time that Harry Lemire became interested in dressing Atlantic salmon fly patterns. It was very evident that his steelhead flies became more sophisticated. Whether that was due to any influence from Syd or Pat Crane, I don't know. I never asked. But Syd certainly had an effect on the work of many PNW steelhead fly tiers. Gone were the traditional steelhead patterns like the Thor and Polar Shrimp, and fly boxes were filled with patterns, bright and dark, with the signature small heads and flowing hackles and wings.

I'm not as serious a student of fly dressing as some members here. What I remember from conversations with Sid is to pay attention to tying. That there is more to it than the aesthetics. Attributes of Sid's flies, small heads, hackles and wings that move in the current, result in flies that fish better. I try to remember that whenever I notice my own work showing signs of carelessness.

Sg

 

Thanks for reminding me of the year he died Salmo_g. It was the 1970's when he moved to Seattle to be closer to his daughter after he retired.

I know after he moved to Seattle, Walt's flies made a major transformation which I attribute to Syd's influence on him and his tying. I also know it was about the time Syd moved to Seattle that Harry's flies also changed, but since Harry also got to know Pat Crane, it may have been the influence of both that caused the change in Harry's flies.

I also know that after Trey had his second book published by Amato, the nature of the steelhead flies the larger perverers of steelhead flies changed their character to a more streamlined fly from the over-dressed, chenille bodied, heavily winged ones they had been selling.

Syd's influence is seen in many ways large and small amongst steelhead and Atlantic Salmon tyers and fishermen. Hair wing flies became sleeker and sparser, feather wing flies came back into style and use, spey and dee flies began to be used again, and I dare say he was responsible for the resurgence in Classic Atlantic Salmon Flies we've witnessed here in the PNW. In fact, the NW Atlantic Salmon Fly Guild I see as the direct result of Syd's influence.

He never put a material on a hook that didn't have a purpose, and that includes his Classic Atlantic Salmon Flies. Alec Jackson once told me that Syd said that good fly tyers don't have to overwhelm with amount of material or shear size of fly, but rather like well-trained musicians, they used subtlety and skill instead of the bad rock musicians who simply played loader to cover their lack of skill. In my own tying, I strive to make sure every material has a purpose and that the result has the sleek, streamlined, fishy look to it (that's what Bob Arnold refers to as the best fishing flies for steelhead).