Valley Angler: The Danville Chenille Co. — A New Hampshire tradition

It is a good bet that most fly tiers would agree that one of the most important ingredients in any fly would have to be the thread. Given the wide variety of different threads available to tiers today, it is hard to imagine a time when good thread was hard to find. There was a time when fly tiers relied on common sewing thread to tie their flies. If you have ever experimented with a spool of thread from your wife's sewing basket you know what these tiers were up against.

Sometime in the late 1940s, a fellow by the name of Herm Meyer was frustrated by the lack of quality fly-tying thread. As you might have guessed, he was an avid fly fisherman and fly tier. Mr. Meyer was a true New Hampshire Yankee and set out to remedy the problem. The problem was to come up with a thread that was both strong and would lay flat on the hook.