UNDERCURRENTS
LEIGH PERKINS A TRUE OUTDOORSMAN WHO LOVED FLY FISHING AND HUNTING AND WHO HAD A STRONG CONNECTION WITH SOUTH AFRICA, LEIGH PERKINS, THE PATRIARCH OF ORVIS, PASSED AWAY RECENTLY AT THE AGE OF 93. VIA AN EXCERPT FROM TOM SUTCLIFFE’S SHADOWS ON THE STREAMBED, AND TOM’S FRESH TRIBUTE TO LEIGH, WE PAY OUR RESPECTS TO A LIFE WELL SPENT. Photos. c/o Orvis
The passing of Leigh Perkins, former President of Orvis; some random, joyful thoughts amid my sadness What many outdoor fishing and hunting folk maybe don’t get about Orvis is that it is the genuine article. Let me explain. Since 1856 Orvis was, and still is, run by people who actually shoot and fish and totally get what drives us. Leigh Perkins, for example, hunted and fished around 250 days a year all his life into his 90s. And in 1965, when he bought Orvis, he was already a regular customer and wasn’t just looking to buy any business; he wanted a fishing outfit. Orvis was then a quasi-boutique, family-owned company founded in 1856 by Charles F. Orvis and later mainly known for its fly reels (CFOs from the 1890s) and bamboo rods (made by Wes Jordan from the 1940s). Over the next three decades Perkins transformed Orvis into a metaphor for ‘excellence’ and one of the biggest and most respected outdoor sporting and apparel companies in the world. His sons, Dave and ‘Perk’, have followed in their late father’s footsteps, both with a love of the outdoors as firmly embedded in their DNA as the oval tinsel on Goldribbed Hare’s Ears. In 1975 Orvis was pivotal in developing the graphite fly rod, using unidirectional graphite with individual fibres travelling in the same direction to mimic the fibres in bamboo rods. Graphite was hugely expensive back then and only just emerging from its mantle as a highly classified military secret. Key companies were Shakespeare with their UGLY STIK, Fenwick with their High Modulus Graphite
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(HMG) and Orvis. Hardy Bros had seen the ‘graphite light’ before all of them, but dropped the ball on the try line, maybe one of the biggest corporate blunders of all time! Other Orvis graphite milestones were the first 2-weight, the Ultra Fine 7’9”, and, in 1988, the first 1-weight at 7’6”. But I think Leigh’s personal love of bamboo (certainly initially), defined Orvis’s approach to how a graphite rod should behave. On this score, Leigh told me the Orvis Far and Fine, a 7’ 9 “ 5-wt, first made in their Vermont factory in 1976, was the finest trout stream casting instrument they ever produced. Its subsequent seismic popularity speaks for itself. Orvis rod engineer Howard Steere, designed it with Leigh. Then in 1989, Tom Peters, author of the best-seller, In Search of Excellence, named Orvis graphite fly rods ‘one of the five best products ever made in the United States’. High praise. I One day, I mentioned to Steere that the boss seemed pretty keen on rod development and he said, “He’s not. He’s passionate, verging on crazy. And he only does perfection.” He then added a telling comment, “Leigh has a better feel for fly rods than anyone I know.” And Leigh was not just the titular president of the company; he was the totally involved owner, the marketing director and the art director. He oversaw every product the company made and he even personally vetted each item that went into their legendary catalogues. He was also behind a bunch of somewhat unusual Orvis products
W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M
