Thanks for all of the kind comments.
As far as the books I'm looking for, they are still under copyright. One is The Guide to North Country Flies by Mike Harding, going for $2,269.75 and A Handbook of North Country Flies by W. S. Roger Fogg, going for $692.43 on Amazon. Both were listed at $99 for a while, I should have bought them then. Oh well...
Trifly - I can only image tying a 24! Nice job.
Hankaye - I found that archive site and google books. Thanks for mentioning it. I have downloaded about 100 books.
I found a list that Rob Smith posted in another forum comparing Pearsall to YLI. I edited the list and put them in numerical order. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to compare colors just from pics.
YLI No. Vintage Pearsall No.
201 = Scarlet(11a) – Bright Red
208 = Blue (7) – Ocean Blue
213 = Straw (2) – Pale Yellow
216 = Hot Orange (19) – Bright Orange
214 = Lemon Yellow (4) – Daffodil Yellow
231 = Gold (6A) – Bright Apricot
232 = Grey (9A) – Light Blue Grey
241 = Golden Olive (11) – Dull Gold? = Dk Claret(15) – ( 248 – Magenta or 267 – Burgandy )
244 = Purple (8) – Eggplant
258 = Claret (14) – Dark Purple
261 = Primrose (3) – Buttercup
258 = Claret (14) – Dark Purple
? = 6B? = Olive (16)
BLK = Black (9) – BLK
WHT6 = White (1) - WHT
I found a site that sells the YLI fairly reasonable, and has a boatload of colors.
https://ylicorp.com/products/silk-100-t ... 5612393166
oldhat - Thanks for mentioning your patterns. I'll check them out. I have been using the Trico pattern that Eric Stroup ties. It has worked very well for me, and extremely easy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk1C2GfDWb8
ForumGhillie - I have a cottage about 3 milse south of the AuSable river. Actually the first book I read on soft hackles was The Soft-Hackled Fly and Tiny Soft Hackles by Nemes. I got really geeked when I saw that he fished the same stretch of the AuSable that I regularly fish. (The North Branch, usually Dam 4)
letumgo - Thanks for the offer. I have been buying Ephemera here:
https://www.aaronmostojfeathers.com/sto ... spool.html
This is the best price I have found, $4.95 a spool, and reasonable shipping. I have 8 spools of most of the 14 colors available. After one purchase he sent me a free spool of Pearsall purple to play around with. It does look like it's nicer silk thread than the Ephemera. Since I can only do a comparison, I'll stick with what I have. Thanks for the offer though.
My only complaint with Ephemera is that it gets tangled on the spool sometimes as it comes off. I wrecked a couple of flies until I figured out how to deal with it. One plus is that the Ephemera comes in 100M spools.
I'm smoking a turkey for Christmas dinner, gotta go out and check it. Merry Christmas everyone!