Henry Chee

Henry Chee Lures are the root of the entire Hawaiian-style trolling lure tradition. Born in Honolulu in 1910, Henry Chee moved to Kona, Hawaii in 1931 and entered the charter business around 1935, running the legendary Malia — nicknamed the "Grey Ghost of the Kona Coast" for his uncanny habit of leaving the fleet and finding fish alone. He's widely credited as the man who pioneered marlin fishing on the Kona coast, mentoring nearly every skipper who came after him.

The famous "Chee lure" was born in 1949, when plastic resin was brand new. As the story goes, Chee came across a screwdriver set in a jar of hardened resin and immediately saw the possibility: pour resin into a mold, set a metal leader tube down the center, and add pearl shell and color for flash. Borrowing bar glasses from the Ocean View Inn as molds, he created the first beveled resin-head trolling lures. He fished the first six Hawaiian International Billfish Tournaments and guided a who's-who of mainland celebrities, including Henry Fonda, Errol Flynn, and Lucille Ball. His most storied fish was a 1,095-pound Pacific blue in 1964, an all-tackle record at the time. He died the following year, at just 55.

View the full history and identification guide for Henry Chee in our Digital Archive