This is a crazy endeavor and there is absolutely no way to truly do the topic full justice , but here goes...
My first attempt will largely be around commercial fly tying which has quite a history in Wisconsin. In all honesty, that is probably true of most states as fly tying was once a much more local business. Although many businesses were once much more local. Most cities in Wisconsin once had their own breweries, creameries and cheese factories, butcher shops and sausage makers, and other such local producers when our world was much smaller and shipping things around the globe - or even relatively locally - was much slower and more difficult.
Today, of course, most flies in fly shop bins have been tied thousands of miles overseas in southeast Asia and Africa. This mirrors most any product that is labor-intensive to make. As an aside, I always think it is rather odd to see "hand tied flies" advertised - how else would one tie flies? (I'd buy "foot-tied flies" out of curiosity...)
Probably the best known from Wisconsin are the relatively large commercial retailers and wholesalers like C.J. Frost Fishing Tackle which was bought and later became the Weber Lifelike Fly Company, the Olson Fly and Lure Company (La Crosse / Cashton), Herter's (Beaver Dam), and the smaller, local productions like Cap's fly shop on the Wolf River and tiers like Helen Shaw and Royce Dam that drove much of what is today's modern commercial fly tying. Additionally, there are are a number of Wisconsin fly patterns that have spread across the country - Hornberg Special, Dahlberg Diver, Thunder Creek Minnow. More than a few that are still mostly regional patterns like the Pass Lake, Pink Squirrel, Llama fly and some that are even more localized favorites like Cap's Hairwing (Ed Haaga Fly) and the Close Carpet Fly, among many others. (For more on Notable Old Wisconsin Fly Patterns.)
The video above - from Wisconsin PBS - is time-stamped to begin at the story about Carrie Frost and how central Wisconsin became "the fly tackle capital of the world". Frost's company's flies were mostly tied by local women, much the same that Palmer Olson in the Cashton area had local women tying flies for this Olson Fly and Lure Company. This was in a time where women rarely had jobs outside of the home and tying flies was one of the few opportunities that they had to make money. Today, most flies in your local fly shop are tied overseas (more on that later).
In looking at the flies in the Olson shadow boxes (above) and what I can find online, almost all of them are streamers or winged wet flies (link to more images). Much of this, I would assume, has a lot to do with the timing of these businesses. Carrie Frost died in 1937 and Palmer Olson was of a later generation, passing away in 1999. I do not know the dates of his business because information is hard to find online. I would assume that later Olson catalogs likely had a greater mix of nymphs and dry flies. Dry flies were often difficult to get to float due to heavy hooks and chicken hackle feathers nowhere near the quality that they are today. Many of those tying dry flies were forced to raise their own chickens or find them from a local breeder that was growing chickens for hackle. Much of this was happening in the Catskill Mountains which has the longest history of dry fly fishing in the United States.
I write much of this only knowing the details through what I have read and what I have been told by those like George Close, my great uncle and mentor. One of the parts of the story I find most interesting is that another Wisconsinite, Royce Dam, a contemporary of George's and similarly, a mentee of Cap Buettner and Ed Haaga, is part of the history of moving fly tying off shore. I knew Royce in his later years but he was a mentor to several friends. Royce was a Marine and saw "the shit" in World War II in Japan. He writes in his book that he was one of 34 of the original 210 in his company that survived Iwo Jima. And he was a colorful guy with maybe the most colorful language I have ever heard (I often develop "field mouth" but Royce could make me blush).
Royce was instrumental in helping establish commercial fly tying operations in southeastern Asia. It is hard to find any information on this but it is straight from Royce's mouth. He told stories about being overseas for weeks at a time teaching women to tie each particular fly for whatever companies were "overseasing" their flies. And he, of course, wrote one of the best and probably most overlooked fly tying "how-to" books, The Practical Fly Tier. Royce had a way of explaining fly tying that was clear and concise - no-nonsense has he puts in on his book cover.
I could write about any number of other tyers in more recent history. Certainly Gary Borger, whom wrote the foreward for Royce's book, is a name that needs to be mentioned. While he is not a native Wisconsinite, he earned his Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and taught at the Wausau branch campus for decades. During this time is when he wrote the bulk of his books and filmed several videos. However, I hesitate to sit and list many names given all those that I will overlook. Video and what is available online is a great place for you to start your own research.
The video of Ed Haaga tying a Cap's Hair Wing (below) is a great piece of history.
I will say that I miss that days that the Madison trout shows - the Spring Opener and the Ice Breaker - were a thing. Damn it, COVID. I sat at those and watched Dick Berge and Buzz (I'm forgetting the last name here...) tie hex flies, Tom Wendelberg tie any number of his fly patterns, or Larry Meicher - the Pass Lake Kid - tie what other than a Pass Lake? I learned from a lot of great tyers and later I had the chance to tie a few times, at least once focusing on tying the Close Carpet Fly, the piece of Wisconsin fly tying history I know best.
Before I leave you with a couple of videos - the first on Wolf River Flies, the last on "Wisconsin flies" - Paul Smith wrote a 2018 article about 13 famous Wisconsin fly patterns, some a little more recent, some more historic. His list was:
I did what I could to use links to Wisconsin fly fishing and tying pages and videos. If anyone has details - other than those in the Paul Smith article - particularly for the Hart Washer, please comment below.
I have a strong passion for retaining and remembering "old" flies. As such, I helped create two different "COVID-era" videos about historic Wisconsin flies (which I have not watched in a while). The video above is about Wolf River flies with particular thanks to Andy Killoren, Steve Heuser, and Zach Buchanan for sharing their knowledge and experience along with my dad's cousin Sue (Close) Kinneson for sharing some of the Close family memories. And below is a video about Wisconsin flies that you will see me for about the first 30 seconds before I fade into the background (my preferred position). The night was organized and lead by John "Duke" Welter (thanks, Duke!)
Lastly, I think any mention of Wisconsin flies would be incomplete without a mention of Ross Mueller's two books, Fly Fishing Midwestern Spring Creeks--Angler's Guide to Trouting the Driftless Area but especially his first book, Upper Midwest Flies That Catch Trout and How to Fish Them: Year-Round Guide. His first book is a wealth of information and the fly patterns he presents are a mix of new and old. Twenty-five years later, I still feel this is the best book on Wisconsin fly fishing.
This is a VERY incomplete treatment of the subject of the history of fly tying in Wisconsin. I tried to keep this "historic" - which for me, means largely outside of my time frame of experience. Histories are what we know and can find "in the archives". Not everyone writing this would include the same histories or and they would include and exclude different fly tyers but these are what I know. More recent histories would have more flies of Pat Ehlers, Brad Bohen, Tim Landwehr and crew at Tight Lines Fly Fishing Company, and and many other contemporaries. I hope to continue to write some of those stories because histories are often lost - unless they are written down or on video and not enough of them are. This is part of why I wanted to write this post - and I want you to comment and share what you know.
Additional Information and Links
C.J. Frost Fishing Tackle, later the Weber Lifelike Fly Company (Carrie Frost)
Olson Fly and Lure Company (Palmer Olson - link to an oral history from UW La Crosse)
Wolf River - Cap Buettner and Ed Haaga
Wisconsin Fly Fisher's Notable Old Wisconsin Fly Patterns page
Great post, Jason. I had the privilege of getting to know Royce Dam later in his life. We’d sit in his fly tying room in the basement and I’d listen to him tell stories of his travels to Bhutan to teach the local women how to tie the flies. He also spoke fondly of his time with Gary Borger.
Only once did he ever share the whole Iwa Jima story with me - I wish I would have been able to record it but I was in the car driving us to a Driftless trout stream. The river was blown out when we got there so we didn’t fish much that day, but the ride home was filled with fishing…