Tool Allows Disabled Fly Tiers to Tie With One Hand

May 22, 2009 By: Marshall Cutchin

“Only weeks before a sniper’s bullet found its way into Sgt. First Class Marvin Johnson’s chest in 2006, he had managed to find a fly fishing rod in the middle of Iraq. He would steal away in quiet moments to practice casting — whipping his fishing line into an empty, sandy lot in Baghdad, slowly pulling it back in.” After meeting Marvin Johnson, whose left arm was paralyzed as a result of his wound, fly fisher Jesse Scott of Edmunds, Washington developed a device, the Evergreen Hand, that allows fly fishermen with one hand to tie their own flies. You can see a video of how the Evergreen Hand is used to tie flies on the Federation of Fly Fishers Web site. Chris Fyall writes about the friendship that produced the new tool for disabled fly tiers in The Enterprise.