Hardy Brothers was once a company where you could get absolutely everything you needed (& a bunch of what you didn't necessarily need) for fly fishing. This video below shows all the areas they covered. You could, in theory, walk into their store with absolutely no clue about fly fishing & walk out fully equipped from head to toe, including having been taught how to use all the stuff you bought. It was, without doubt, a full-service fly fishing company.
Times have changed & Hardy is not what it used to be. That is evident in the remarks the video makes about a true Hardy customer doesn't ask about prices. That implies that they (their customers) didn't need to worry about the cost of equipment. While that probably was just a bit of imaging & marketing back then - it's maybe not the best approach these days. My, how times have changed!!
Another striking difference between then (at the time of this video) & now, is how they made fly reels. In the last post about Hardy reels, we looked at a video showing how they make their reels nowadays. Take a quick look in this video below at about 4:25. There you will see a skilled machinist making reel parts on a lathe. Again I declare: how times have changed!!
I also enjoyed the brief interview with the man working on salmon flies. Back then all of Hardy's flies were tied by hand. All the tiers were apprenticed for two years - that's how long it took to learn the hundreds of patterns they offered & to gain the skills needed to work quickly & efficiently. In those days women tied the smaller flies & men tied the larger sizes. Only men tied salmon flies. How's that for being ridiculous?!!?
Hardy was a little late to get into the fiberglass rod market. As such they had to send technicians over here to America to learn the ropes of making the glass blanks. They quickly made up for lost time, though, & this video shows how they really geared up to mass-produce glass rods.
I hope you enjoy this look back at what Hardy Brothers used to be.