{ the big ca tch}
O
n a bright and blustery morning, Bernard “Lefty” Kreh, 85, sits quietly in a director’s chair inside a fair tent in Waynesboro, Va. It’s the start of the 10th annual Virginia Fly-Fishing Festival, and this weekend more than 1,500 anglers from the mid-Atlantic and beyond will come to this bluff overlooking the South River. Huddling in tents named after rivers in the commonwealth, they will listen to presentations on trout and small-
mouth bass, sample Virginia wines, and buy new rods and reels and fish-themed artwork. Many attendees share the same perennial obses- sion as Kreh — one that spouses and co-workers don’t always understand — and so the show serves as their big chance each year to gather with a few hundred like-minded souls and talk about nothing but fly-fishing. ¶ Short and chubby, with a round, rosy face, Kreh pushes himself out of his chair and, fly rod in hand, shuffles across a field toward the river, where organizers have built a demonstration pond. With winds gusting at 25 miles an hour, it seems almost too windy for casting with a fly rod. But Kreh takes a few warm-up casts, and soon more than 100 people have trickled out of the tents and lined both sides of the pond, eager to watch a show that Kreh has been putting on for crowds since the 1950s. ¶ In- troduced simply as “Lefty” over the loudspeakers, Kreh is the festival’s headliner and main draw. Today’s program describes him as “doubtless the best-known fly angler of our time.” ¶ “My concept on fly-casting is en- tirely different from everyone else’s,” Kreh starts, his old Maryland drawl carrying from the speakers.
Casting a fly requires a certain level
of physical dexterity, but it does not, as Kreh insists, require much in the way of brute strength. While many instructors teach people to cast with their arms, Kreh instead teaches them to cast using their entire bodies. That’s why he’s able to get people of all ages and strengths to cast a fly rod, often in a matter of min- utes, as he will this weekend. “I’m 85 years old. I ain’t got no power
left,” he says. “This is not a muscle sport. Once you understand that, you can fish for anything.” For the next 45 minutes, Kreh, who
lives in Baltimore County and is being paid by a Texas fishing rod manufacturer to be here this weekend, expounds on the physics of fly-casting, leavening his talk with some trick casts and a few instances of unintentional physical comedy. At one point, he calls out an au- dience member — “You, in the gray
shirt” — and asks everyone to imagine the man is a tree along a trout stream. Kreh casts more than 40 feet of line, throwing a bend into the last few feet so it wraps perfectly around the human stump and drops softly to the ground. The next minute, Kreh is casting near- ly 100 feet of line effortlessly into the wind — a feat that men half his age and twice his strength struggle with. Ex- perienced anglers shake their heads in amazement. “He’s still the master,” a woman in
the crowd says to her friend. Kreh asks for volunteers who need
help with their casting form to step forward to the pond. Under his instruc- tion, their ugly casts morph into smooth strokes within minutes. After he wraps up his talk and the applause dies down, the lingerers circle around him, waiting to introduce themselves and have their hats signed.
26 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | September 19, 2010
Now a fishing celebrity and show-
man well into his golden years, Kreh finds that his services are in as much de- mand as ever. “It’s the way it’s been for years,” he
says. “I started doing this because I wanted to get around and see places and get more experience [as an angler]. If you can do it with a little personal- ity, then people wanna know where you been and what fish you caught. They wanna hear stories.”
Kreh has been demonstrating his wizardry with a fly rod for the past 50 years. One of his main goals is to show
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192