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Hand-tied flies: Priceless and
Viceless
Without a vise, Harry Lemire
creates history with every fly tied
By Mark Freeman
Medford Mail-Tribune
'In-Hand Harry' Lemire practices the Renaissance-era art of tying flies without the use of a vise.
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Harry Lemire is fly-fishing's version of the Latin
scholar, a singular crusader who keeps alive one dead
and forgotten dialect in the language of fly-tying.
The 68-year-old Washingtonian quite literally holds an
enormous piece of fly-tying history between his left
thumb and index finger every time he ties a fly.
Lemire is the country's only known master fly-tyer who
does it the Renaissance-era way by creating intricate
Atlantic salmon flies without the main creature comfort
of fly-fishing's Industrial Age — the fly vise.
"In-Hand Harry" holds the hook in his left hand and
lashes the feathers, thread and other materials to the
hook with his right hand.
Those who see Lemire in action often wonder just how he
does it, let alone does it as well as two-handed tier's
who labor for hours over a hook secured safely to a
vise.
The question they invariably ask him, though, isn't how,
but why?
"I ask myself the same question," Lemire laughs, "when I
see those guys climbing up the side of a mountain with
just a rope. What would you want to do that for?"
In a sport that is considered the high-brow side of
angling, Lemire is a fly-tying traditionalist in the
purest sense of the word.
“ Tying in hand, now, is strictly for
nostalgia. The tradition is what I like about
it, and the tradition is why I do it. ”
— Harry Lemire |
Harry Lemire works his magic. |
"I like cane rods, silk lines and wooden reels," Lemire
says, nursing a glass of wine during a recent visit to
Oregon's Rogue River for some steelhead fly-fishing.
"I'm very traditionally minded and like bringing back
something that's more or less forgotten," he says.
And making this leap to the past has made Lemire —
already famous as a pioneer of the Northwest's steelhead
fly-fishers — an iconoclast of what passes as today's
conventional tying wisdom.
"This tying in hand has really brought his name
forward," says Dave Roberts, an Eagle Point, Ore.,
fly-caster and tyer who shares some of Lemire's purist
views. "He's known from Nova Scotia to Russia to Alaska.
"He's taking an old art form and keeping the history
alive, the tradition alive," Roberts says. "And it's
incredibly neat to watch."
Lemire's path down a road no longer traveled began a
decade ago when his wife, Marlene, bought him T.E.
Price-Tannett's classic 19th century fly-tying book,
"How to Dress Atlantic Salmon Flies."
The book centered around tying "in hand," because the
vise was not yet invented, Lemire says.
"I thought that was pretty slick," Lemire
says.
Before that, Lemire was like many of his hard-core
cohorts in that he occasionally repaired a fly while
holding it in one hand and standing in a stream.
For six years, he practiced holding the hook in his left
hand while layering on the various feathers and threads
to create the multi-dimensional Atlantic salmon flies.
While feeling attached to history with each new in-hand
fly, Lemire also sensed how progress has made hand-tying
easier now than when it was common in the 1800s.
Tying materials are better, sturdier and far more
available than they were for his historical peers.
"I have a much better advantage than they did," Lemire
says. "I have good bifocal glasses and better light.
They used to tie in sunlight, during the day."
A typical Atlantic salmon fly takes him about four hours
to create, usually in a pair of two-hour sessions. Most
of the work is preparing and laying out the various
materials, then fastening them in order.
He will put the fly down occasionally to rest his aging
fingers.
"It's a lot of holding with your left hand," he says,
"and tying with your right."
By 1997, he felt accomplished enough in his in-hand
tying ability that he resurrected the art during a
fly-tying show in Seattle's Kingdome.
Tier's huddled in awe as they watched history reinvented
on the Kingdome's 30-yard line.
"Since then, I guess I've been something of a
curiosity," Lemire says. "Now, I'm the crazy guy who
ties flies in his fingers, and that's OK."
Lemire has since tied in more than a dozen large venues,
including April's large Federation of Fly Fishers tying
symposium in Eugene.
His flies are art — excellent representations of the
traditional Atlantic salmon patterns that adorn the
walls of dens and museums worldwide.
And his flies stand alone, without comparison. There
still are no others identified who are tying such flies
in-hand anywhere in the country.
"Really, there's nothing around now to compare them to,"
Lemire says.
He continues to travel the country, talking up the
virtues of the in-hand fly and hoping to get the art
reborn.
Until then, his old, bony fingers will continue to hold
and spin history for the most traditional of the
traditionalists.
"Tying in hand, now, is strictly for nostalgia," he
says. "The tradition is what I like about it, and the
tradition is why I do it."
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