Dave McNeese
The following is an excerpt from Steelhead Fly Fishing, a book that will available soon in a digital format. This excerpt was from a chapter from the great angler section that discussed my friend and master fly dresser Dave McNeese. In this book I included a set of beautiful color fly plates. The 1st plate, which had 24 flies, were all tied by Dave.
Dave was born and raised in Camp Creek, a little Oregon town on the Willamette River just east of Eugene. His first fishing experiences were with his father, and he was soon fly fishing for trout every day, a serious angler while his peers were still shooting marbles. He recalls removing screens from his house to sift through the Willamette's insect-rich muck and discover what his trout had been eating. A full-service fishing and hunting store became his teenage dream, but the realities of his finances necessitated a less expensive investment. In 1971 he began operating a fly-tying supply company out of his garage, advertising his wares in national magazines. The young entrepreneur's name soon became synonymous with fly-tying materials of the highest quality.
Dave told me a story about himself that I found most revealing. He realized early on that what he wanted to know about fly tying could not be taught in Eugene. He was only twenty-two, and all facets of the hobby, from full-dressed Atlantic salmon flies to ethereal likenesses of mayflies, were his obsession. He bought every book he could find on the subject, including Art Flick's Master Fly Tying Guide, an anthology of notable angling personalities and their fly-tying methods. The book so profoundly influenced him that nothing less than a pilgrimage back East to meet the masters and learn the secrets of their craft would do. Eric Leiser, Walt and Winnie Dette, Ray Smith, Harry and Elsie Darbee, Buck Metz, Ted Niemeyer, and Art Flick grounded him well. Dave still takes great pride in properly tying a Catskill dry.
A second turning point in his fly-tying education occurred in 1976, when he saw his first Syd Glasso steelhead fly. Glasso worked in Forks, Washington, as a schoolteacher and tied the most finely crafted steelhead flies in the world, bringing to our sport the tying excellence, the traditions, and the aesthetics of Old World tyers. (He would go on to greater fame as a tyer of Atlantic salmon flies. Some of his very best work adorns the luscious fly plates in Joseph Bates's The Art of the Atlantic Salmon Fly (1987, David R. Godine Publisher, Inc.).
When Dave opened up McNeese's Fly Shop in Salem, Oregon, obtaining exotic fly tying materials and dyeing them in shades found nowhere else became an important service to his customers. He invented new steelhead patterns, testing them on dozens of friends, and he tied old standards in new ways by incorporating hot orange and electric purple while emulating the style and craftsmanship perfected by Glasso.
His favorite waters for testing new patterns are, alternately, the Deschutes, the North Umpqua, and the North Santiam, the latter a nearby tributary of the Willamette that he describes, without hestitation, as his home river. Historically, the Willamette supported only runs of winter steelhead. Efforts to establish Siletz summer steelhead in the Santiam failed, and Skamania hatchery steelhead from the Washougal River were introduced. These plants took, and they became the basis for a splendid annual run that has built up to over twenty thousand summer steelhead. I’ve included a picture of Dave, who is a lefty like me and the fly plate, which is plate #1 in my book Steelhead Fly Fishing
Fly Plate Info:
Row I - Black Gordon, Brad's Brat, Brown Heron, Burlap
Row 2 - Fall Favorite, Golden Demon, Green Butt Skunk, Lady Caroline
Row 3 - Macks Canyon, Orange Heron, Orange Shrimp, Purple Peril
Row 4 Red Ant, Silver Hilton, Skykomish Sunrise, Sol Due
Row 5 - Del Cooper, Skunk, Thor, Umpqua Special
Row 6 - Blue Boy, Bronze Brad's Brat, Green Butt Silver Hilton, Pale Peril
