Who is lefty kreh

Larry Dahlberg. Flip Pallot. Cliff Pace. Nick Curcione. Bob Clouser. Rob Fordyce. The key to a real good joke is that the last one or two words is a trigger. A joke has to be a surprise. There is an art to doing it.

This man came home from work. And his wife hit him on the head with a frying pan, knocked him flat on the floor. He came home the next day, his wife hit him again, harder. First thing I do is call everybody by their first name. Everybody has a first name. You do it in a nice way.

Famous people want to be treated that way. You should see them guys. At , the camera people who are filming them go away. We all take a shower.

They love to tease each other. Me and a guy named Howard Gillelan from Outdoor Life were the first two sportswriters sent down to Cuba after the revolution. We went down for the 14th annual Hemingway white marlin tournament. We were just observers. Well, it was a three-day tourney. I had never caught a billfish. Lots of saltwater species, but not that. When we got on the boat, Ernest told us that his little mate [Gregorio Fuentes, whom some have attributed as the inspiration for the character Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea ] was the best billfisherman in the world.

Well, I glommed onto that guy. I spent the entire day with that guy learning to debone mullet and all that kind of stuff. I was in my joy. That night, me and Howard stayed at a thing called the Hotel Nacional, which was a giant hotel.

But except for the crew that worked there, there was not a single person there, because the revolution was just over. Howard had quite a bit of education. Do you know who Ernest Hemingway is? He gave me a lecture. But Lefty and the fly rod were not fast friends. Perfecting his cast was a slow, arduous process.

But he practiced and practiced and gradually started to develop his own way of doing things. To him, the tried-and-true casting method was, simply put, inefficient. For centuries, fly-fishermen had been moving nothing but their forearm, ticking between 10 and 2 like a metronome pendulum. But you use the rest of your body, even when playing Ping-Pong. Lefty catches rockfish on the Severn River with his first fly reel and rod in Around the same time, Lefty also caught another catch.

One night, he went to see a movie at the old Tivoli Theatre and met a beautiful little blonde behind the ticket booth counter. His writing career actually began at the Frederick News-Post in But still, with the energy and appetite of a young man in his early thirties, Lefty got to thinking: What if he could give his readers advice outside of the Old Line State?

Before long, he was getting invitations from all over the world. Today he can tell you where to find the best trout streams in England or what to use for barramundi in Australia or how to catch Atlantic salmon on the Alta River near the Norwegian Sea. Even when learning to tie flies, Lefty would buy a bunch, cut them apart, and see how they were put together. Lefty has caught dozens of species on that single pattern, from stripers to sailfish, and in , the federal government decided to put it on a stamp.

Since then, Lefty has also designed his own rods and developed fishing lessons to live by through 31 books. In , after a brief stint at the St. On the side, he also wrote books, taught clinics, sat on the staff of national magazines, and traveled the world.

Lefty shows the difference between the traditional fly-casting method and his signature technique. We hugged. Don't worry about paying it back, we really don't need it. I had thought to have the measure of Lefty. I was short. As it turned out, we had no need for the money either, but Lefty was there for me all the same.

Throughout the decade or so that I guided, Lefty referred hundreds of anglers who became regular clients and friends, and all the while advised me: "You have to move along from guiding into other things. He recommended me for personal appearances of all kinds, and for consulting gigs as well.

When I got into the TV business he was a frequent and very popular guest, still whispering, "diversify. Lefty led a movement for manufacturers to offer high-quality, affordable fly rods and reels, and he developed a method of fly casting that is digestible to almost anyone willing to invest in a short learning curve. More important, he developed a method of teaching it, which was not only effective, but entertaining.

He found ways to showcase his method at shows, drawings in books, and outstanding videos; making it achievable and available to countless folks who would have never considered fly rodding. We have watched Lefty cast and tie flies at consumer shows. We've watched his casting videos. We've read his countless "how-to" articles, and enjoyed his 47 books and innumerable writings on outdoor photography, knots, and travel.

We've listened to his jokes, we hugged his neck, we shook his hand, and we are better off for it. You and I shall never see his likes again. Flip Pallot has been Lefty Kreh's friend and fishing partner for the past 53 years. Give a Gift Subscriber Services. See All Other Magazines. See All Special Interest Magazines. All Fly Fisherman subscribers now have digital access to their magazine content. This means you have the option to read your magazine on most popular phones and tablets.

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