LEFTY KREH HAS BEEN ONE of the MOST Leftyinfluential and BELOVED FIGURES in FLY-FISHING

LEFTY KREH HAS BEEN ONE OF THE MOST LeftyINFLUENTIAL AND BELOVED FIGURES IN FLY-FISHING It had been a few weeks since I’d arranged to take a cast- of gear and taught tens of thousands of individuals how ing lesson from fly-fishing sensei “Lefty” Kreh. I rang to improve their casting. Known for his welcoming and the doorbell at his modest split-level home in Cock- charismatic personality, Kreh is a beloved figure among eysville, Maryland. fly anglers everywhere. And yes, I was a little intimi- “Who the hell are you?” he shouted from a second-story dated the first time I met him. window. “Just kidding,” he chortled before ducking his Kreh handed me a rod and said, “Go ahead and cast.” I head back inside. muscled the line back and forth before launching about Kreh reappeared at the front door, holding a bundle of 30 feet of it across the pond. “Well, the good news is fly rods. At 5 feet 7, he was shorter than I remembered you’re going to be a hell of a lot better when you leave from fly-fishing shows, but his piercing, light blue eyes here,” he said. “Have you ever looked at your backcast?” and contagious, gap-toothed smile gave him a cheery, ap- I had not. proachable appearance. “Hey, my ball is hanging low,” he “Good,” he said, “because it’s ugly as hell.” said with a chuckle. “Can you go check my mail?” Kreh then showed me a style of fly casting he’d taught to He’d rigged a rope-and-ball contraption on his mailbox thousands of people since he perfected it in 1957. Instead to let him know when the mail was delivered. Many more of the standard approach of stiffly whipping the fly rod Ijury-rigged contraptions were around his home and in between the 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock positions, Kreh his truck, including a bobber on the truck’s radio antenna moves his body, reaching far back with his arm on each to help him find the vehicle in a crowded parking lot. He cast. “You gotta pivot your body,” he said. “Don’t use your also had a padded shelf on the driver’s-side door. “I’m arms. Keep your elbow on a shelf. Don’t bend your wrist.” always trying to fix stuff,” Kreh said as we drove. He demonstrated, effortlessly launching the fly line about We arrived at a park, and he started putting together 60 feet across the pond. A few minutes later he stood rods. Looking at my brightly colored running shoes, he beside me with one hand on my shoulder and the other said, “I sure as hell hope you didn’t buy two pairs of those, tightly wrapped around my casting wrist. Instantly he Gary.” He made a snickering sound, something he always added 20 feet to my cast. “I told you you’d be better,” he does when he’s delivering one of his infamous one-liners said. “Come on, let’s eat.” or not-safe-for-print jokes. An author, columnist, innovator and teacher, Lefty Early Catches Kreh is one of the most influential figures in fly-fishing. Bernard “Lefty” Victor Kreh was born Feb. 26, 1925, He reinvented the way fly anglers cast, created some in Frederick, Maryland. His father, “Whitey” Kreh, a of the most successful modern fresh- and saltwater fly bricklayer by trade, was killed in 1932 in a freak basket- patterns, collaborated in the design of numerous pieces ball accident. Six-year-old Bernard was the oldest of four 76 Kreh with a mess of bluegills taken in 1950 This big tarpon was fooled by a fly thrown by from Israel Creek in Frederick, Maryland. Kreh in the pioneering days of saltwater fly-fishing. children and became the de facto man of the house. land, where the military was brewing super-germs His mother, Helen, had no income, so the family for biological warfare. “I was the 14th person hired ended up on welfare. for the program, and they paid me 79 cents an hour,” “It was different back then,” Kreh says. “We never Kreh says. “We grew 1,800 gallons of anthrax each got a nickel. They paid our rent, delivered coal to our week and then concentrated it into a thick mud for house and distributed food to us. I’ll never forget the scientists. It was shift work, so I could keep on walking down North Bentz Street with sacks of food fishing and hunting in my off hours.” labeled ‘relief.’ People looked at you funny, and not in One morning, Kreh woke up feeling ill and realized a good way. We were so poor we couldn’t afford to buy he’d been exposed. “My arm turned all black, and I a mosquito underpants.” was sick as hell and in the hospital for weeks,” Kreh As an adolescent, Kreh fell into a rut of delinquen- says. “I eventually beat it, though, and they developed cy. He says joining the Boy Scouts at age 12 changed a stronger strain from the cultures in my blood.” He his life. “I was getting into fistfights and running with jokes there is a strain of anthrax named after him. the wrong crowd,” he recalls. “Nothing horrible, but “They call it BVK-1, after my initials.” petty vandalism and stuff like that. I couldn’t afford Kreh often says the best catch he ever made was his the Boy Scouts because there were uniforms and wife. They met when he was early in his career at Fort activities to pay for. But we worked something out Detrick. He was going to see a movie with a couple of where I’d wash dishes at meetings and campouts, and buddies at Frederick’s Tivoli Theatre (known today as they’d let me be a Scout. It gave me a firm basis in the Weinberg Center). When the men met the usher, morals and discipline.” Kreh couldn’t get in because he had been given a Kreh worked his way through high school because his child’s ticket. “I stormed up to the window,” he says, mother told him that if he wanted to go, he had to buy “but when I got there, I saw a beautiful blonde with a his own school clothes and food. He supported himself great figure. I forgot about that ticket pretty quick. Af- and the family by hunting, trapping and fishing. ter the show I walked her home, and then we talked “When I was a kid, a local store was offering 10 for an hour or more.” cents a pound for dressed catfish,” Kreh says. “Well, Her name was Evelyn Mask. “Six months later, we the Monocacy River was filled with them. There were were engaged, and a year later we were married,” Kreh mussels in the river that made great bait. We’d hook says, then winks. “And nine months after that, our them up and toss them in. It was like rolling a wine daughter, Vicky, was born. Back then you didn’t get bottle through a jail cell. The catfish went nuts. I also any nookie if you weren’t married, so we got to work hunted foxes and trapped muskrats for pelt money.” getting married pretty quick.” As a kid, Kreh excelled at sports. His friends called Their son, Larry, came three years later. “Evelyn,” Kreh him Lefty because he dribbled a basketball with his says, “was the best thing that ever happened to me.” left hand. The nickname stuck. Years later, Kreh tore his left bicep, which forced him to do things with his A Natural right hand, arm and shoulder, including casting. By the late 1940s, Kreh had a reputation for being Kreh graduated from high school in 1942. Less than one of the best bass fishermen in Maryland. A local a week later, he received draft orders from the Army. writer and angler named Joe Brooks, who would Installed in the 69th Infantry Division, he fought at become Kreh’s mentor, noticed and called him for a the Battle of the Bulge and was among the men who fishing date. “I took him just downstream of Harpers met advancing Russians at the Elbe River. “War was Ferry, West Virginia, for smallmouth bass, and he horrific,” he says. “You eventually just got used to see- starts stringing up this bamboo fly rod,” Kreh says. ing dead bodies — humans and animals — just strewn Brooks, who went on to become quite a figure in the everywhere. The destruction was unbelievable. I had sport, caught a smallmouth on every other cast. “I one fella walking next to me get shot in the chest. The saw that and thought to myself, Good God, I’ve got impact took his head clean off.” to have me some of this.” Kreh also remembers the U.S. Air Force dropping The next day Kreh drove to Baltimore and bought his canned pancakes and hot maple syrup for the troops. first fly-rod outfit from Tochterman’s Fishing Tackle. “I rammed those pancakes into my mouth as fast as I “They sold me a 9-weight South Bend fiberglass rod could chew them,” he says. with a Pflueger Medalist reel and a Cortland GAF fly Kreh returned to the States in 1945, believing he’d line,” he says. “I was hooked right from the get-go.” be shipped off to Japan, but the Japanese surren- Kreh is recalling that day while we’re sitting in a diner, dered.

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