A quiet day for a poem on Christensen Creek | Outdoors

Leigh H. Perkins, forever synonymous with the Orvis Company, was returning to his adopted Star Valley home for a last gathering with his family, friends and the bucolic spring creek settings that he loved.

Leigh passed away at the age of 93 on May 7 at Mays Pond Plantation in Monticello, Florida.

Eight speakers at last week’s gathering elaborated, chronicled and entertained with tales of the late Orvis Company owner’s intimate sayings and habits, and his profound influence on their lives. Coincidentally, each carefully emphasized Leigh’s trademark jubilant attitude and ever-present boisterous chuckle plus the intricate effects cherished by his sons, granddaughter, current wife, longtime Star Valley pal, two favorite veteran hunting and fishing “guides” and another outdoor industry uber-captain.

Fireside memories for the ages were forged during that heirloom Perkins’ anthology. These episodes were beamed to absent attendants and, fortunately, captured on video.

Throughout the gathering of articulated memories my achievement slid into silent recalls of nearby and faraway times I shared with the senior Perkins between the Snake River Canyon and the vast saltwater Everglades, several hunting trips and Orvis Guide Rendezvous.

In 1965 Leigh acquired the modestly successful Manchester, Vermont, Orvis Company, from which he’d purchased a fly rod during his Williams college years. He’d oscillated between buying Orvis and Nick Creme’s Tyler, Texas-based original soft plastic worm company. As Rick Ruoff, Leigh’s longtime favorite Florida backcountry fishing guide, declared, “You’d have known LHP lots sooner if he’d been selling your Everglades largemouth favorite Creme Scoundrel worms!”

Captain Ruoff was on target about my soft plastics obsession. But he also dragged Leigh into my purview on a long-ago Idaho Falls dove shoot with Bill Klyn and superb Idaho Falls outdoorsmen Bing Lempke and his son, Chris. Bing was a colorful INEL pipe fitter and Federation of Fly Fishers Buszek Award winner. Despite powerful sausage-like-fingers Bing was renowned for tying perfect, nearly invisible size 24 and 26 extended body mayflies. Leigh knew Bing from sportsmen shows when his Orvis booths featured Bing tying dry flies.

As Ruoff humorously recalls, the dove hunt results were meager but he and LHP enjoyed a successful beforehand harvest, arriving with a fine mallard duck, despite waterfowl season being weeks away. Then as on future occasions they’d agreed: If a roadkill game bird or duck passed Leigh’s “sniff test,” it shouldn’t be ignored for dinner!

A key to Orvis’ unprecedented success was Leigh’s attention to detail and listening to what customers wanted from the nation’s oldest sporting retailer and mail order company. Immediately after assuming ownership from Ducky Cockran, Leigh listened in on the ordering telephones.

After college he’d migrated into the rough-and-tumble iron ore mining business in Minnesota before returning to his native Ohio, where he began selling gas welding and cutting equipment for a Cleveland company.

I’m forever fascinated at his transition from the “mining underground” into his passion for an outdoor hunting and fishing lifestyle operation that ultimately “required” several hundred days outdoors among rivers, oceans and blinds, trailing his endless number of pet hunting dogs.

LHP piloted Orvis into fly-fishing and wing-shooting schools, women’s clothing, separate retail stores, graphite fly rods, the latest mail order marketing techniques, the pioneering Orvis Endorsed Guide, Lodge and Outfitter programs, and all while turning soft dog nest beds and explosive fireplace kindling “Georgia fatwood” into iconic household words.

Orvis wasn’t the first company to introduce graphite fly rods but Leigh’s naming his early carbon-based tools the Far And Fine, Adams, All Rounder, Shooting Star and, of course, the storied Limestone Special, was brilliance beyond anything ever seen in that emerging tackle market.

My favorite remembrance of Leigh came when he accepted my invitation for a late fall Snake River Canyon float that we had all to ourselves along with remaining red slashes of mountain maple.

“Oh, that’s another one of your BS stories, Bruun,” Leigh said after a mention of how our cutthroat frequently gobble a Martinez Nymph dropper and continue upwards to make a mouthful of its leading Parachute Adams.

Along a Gauging Straits bank the Orvis boss reared back on a noticeable take. During the release Leigh admitted both his flies were in the mouth!

Further downstream, in a nearly imperceptible reversal, Leigh’s now larger solo hopper pattern was gently floating toward our motionless drift boat. From his elevated bow position Leigh saw a magnum cutthroat aiming at the fly. I watched the angler tense. Years of seeing slow-motion cutthroat shenanigans that cause lesser folks to yank flies away, paid dividends.

After the hopper was sipped by that golden slab, the angler, who recognized what a really big trout he’d hooked, went beyond ballistic with excitement.

“I don’t have trout this big in my spring creeks,” he roared.

Watching LHP, who’d fished “everywhere,” go toe to toe with that massive native was fun.

A few years later while writing a saltwater fly-fishing magazine story I learned Leigh’s extensive family outdoor background and how his mom had introduced and encouraged his and his brother Ralph’s hunting, fishing and outdoor education. Added to these teachings was his dad’s command: “Leigh, you’re very fortunate, so it is important in life to support the wildlife and field resources we treasure so much.”

“Sometimes the straightest line connecting true feelings is a poem,” acknowledged Leigh’s oldest son, Perk, who followed him as head Orvis wrangler.

Perk gave permission for this column to share his fine message and say, and it’s printed above. So long, Leigh. Your impression on the outdoors and us is indelible.