Henry Chee

Henry Chee was born in Honolulu in 1910 and moved to Kona in 1931 where he became one of the first 2 charter captains on the Big Island. He was initially hired by Charley Finlayson to captain his boat, the “Malia” and quickly made a name for himself as being extremely in tune with the ocean and having an inherent knack to consistently find the fish.

The world of offshore fishing in the 1930’s was a far cry from what it is today. There were no GPS or modern day electronics, weather forecasting was essentially non-existent, monofilament line didn’t exist and instead fisherman used linen line which had to be dried daily to prevent it from rotting. All that aside, Henry quickly became recognized as a best in class fisherman with his consistent, large catches. One of his most famous catches was a 1095 pacific blue marlin, that he caught in 1964, which became the all tackle world record at the time.

World War 2 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor had a devastating impact on the state of Hawaii, and in addition to the damage caused by the attack, it also caused tourism to the islands to come to a screeching halt. This temporarily put an end to Chee’s charter business and forced he and his family to move back to Oahu where he resorted to driving tug boats at Honolulu harbor to get by. Once tourism slowly started to return to the islands, Henry gladly made his way back to Kona and picked up right where he left off, as the most consistent charter captain on the island.

In the 1930’s and 40’s, live bait fishing dominated the Hawaiian fishery, as it was economical and bait was plentiful. By the early 1940’s, there were a handful of trolling lures that began to make an appearance in the islands, particularly wooden swim lures from the mainland like the “tarp-o-reno” were brought over by visiting fisherman. These wooden lures may have been the impetus for George Parker to start experimenting with his famed “towel rod” trolling lures. However, Henry Chee was the first person to ever make a lure out of resin, which became the gold standard for lure fishing, and paved the way for modern trolling as we know it today.

The story behind Henry Chee’s first lure, as told by his son Joe Chee, was that in 1949 Joe’s cousins were glassing a small boat behind the The Ocean View Inn in Kona, a bar/restaurant that Henry’s sister-in-law owned. His cousins put leftover resin in a small glass jar and left a screwdriver in it. Henry found the jar with the hardened resin and the screwdriver stuck in place sticking out of the middle of the glass. It caught his eye, and the idea sprung in his mind that he could use this approach to pour resin into a glass, and insert a leader tube in the middle of it with pieces of shell and other materials to produce flash that would look similar to the already proven shape made by George Parker. He borrowed some bar glasses as molds since they were wider at the top and had no bead around the lip which would make it easier to extract the hardened resin without breaking the glass. The buoyancy of the resin was very different from the buoyancy of the other wood lures that were being used at the time, so the cut of the lure face had to be made differently. He proceeded to use trial and error via his daily charter trips to produce the size, shape, and lure face angle that drew in the most fish. If a lure got bit, he kept it, and lures that didn’t bring in fish were discarded.

Every single lure that Henry Chee made was molded using a bar glass from The Ocean View Inn. Joe Chee has memories from his childhood of his father boiling the glasses filled with resin on the family stove in order to remove the lures without breaking the glass. Chee lures were never made commercially. Each lure was handmade at the Chee household, and then hand trimmed, sanded and polished on a lathe, so every single Chee lure is essentially one of a kind.

In the beginning, Henry used red string to affix the inserts in his lures to the leader tube, but quickly found glue to be an easier solution. Mother of pearl was Henry’s preferred lure insert, so much so that he convinced one of his neighbors from Honolulu who worked on the cruise ship the Lurline to hunt some down for him whenever his work brought him to Tahiti. Henry also collaborated with fellow lure maker Chester Kaita of Oahu and is known to have sent Chester some of his lures to copy and put his own personal touch to. As part of that exchange, Chester sent over some white countertop material from Oahu that looked like crushed shells, which also became a standard insert for Chee lures.

The vast majority of Henry’s lures were on the Malia when it was sold after his death, and as such, even the Chee family has very few of his lures. A legitimate Henry Chee original is a rare and valuable collector’s item, and truly represents an irreplaceable piece of fishing history. The combination of Henry’s tenacity, focus and diligence as a captain, paired with how well his lures brought up big fish, had a profound impact on the Kona fishery. Every single year from 1954 through 1963, Henry, at the helm of “Malia,” caught more marlin than any other boat in the kona fleet. The fleet ranged from between 7-10 boats during this 10 year time frame, so to take first place every single year for ten straight years is an amazing accomplishment. Yet even more impressive, is that Henry’s catches accounted for between 1/3 and 1/2 of the total marlin caught by the fleet each of those years. He was truly a dominant force in the Kona fishery, and as a result was in extremely high demand as a charter captain. It was only as other lure makers began to take note of and attempt to replicate his creations did the playing field begin to level out.

Henry is famous for having collaborated with Peter Fithian to co-found the Hawaii International Billfish tournament as a way to bring international attention to the amazing fishery in Kona. The first HIBT ran in 1959 and the tournament continues annually to this day. Henry fished in 6 of these tournaments before he sadly passed away in 1965. Sadly but fittingly, Henry died as a result of a brain aneurysm that struck him while he was gaffing a marlin that he caught for a client. Even though his client on that fateful day was a doctor, the aneurysm was too severe for the doctor to have any impact, and Henry passed at the young age of 55. To this day, the top captain in the HIBT tournament is awarded the Henry Chee Award which is a tremendous honor in respect to the huge impact he had on the Kona fishery, and what he did to shape the course of fishing as we know it today.

(All information provided by Joe and Butch Chee)