Fishermen have been tying flies for two thousand years, and few would argue that the most complicated patterns ever created are the fully dressed salmon patterns that caused such a sensation in the nineteenth century that they continued to be used for the first half of the twentieth. Incredible though it may seem, the vast majority of those flies were tied in the hand. Hardy’s valued tradition to such an extent that their employees were still tying fully dressed salmon flies in the hand right up to the 1960s, at a time when all of their competitors had switched to the vice and were selling hair-winged patterns.

One of the last survivors of this grand tradition is Ken Middlemist, who was apprenticed at Hardy’s to tie salmon flies with no more tools than a pair of scissors and hackle pliers. The extraordinary thing about Ken is that he has continued to tie flies that way ever since; in a rare interview, Ken remarked that he finds using a vice slows him down and gets in the way of doing the tricky work, like tying the fully dressed flies he ties so well.

This limited edition is a unique opportunity to own a set of classic salmon flies tied the traditional way for Hardy’s by Ken. Others have taught themselves to dress flies in the hand, but Ken is one of only a handful of people alive today who learned to tie flies that way and has never used any other method.