Photo by Greg Welander

Whew. If you have never sat through a Lefty Kreh seminar on fly fishing you don’t know what you’re missing, or how much you might be doing wrong.

Lefty would be a legend even if he had stopped dealing with starry eyed “kids” like me decades ago. After all, he’s been fishing since 1947 and has surely dealt with his fair share of people that are “sure” they know how to cast a line, even if their loops are bigger than the deficit.

At the recent Troutfest put on by GRTU, i was lucky enough to catch Lefty as he dispersed nuggets of information for over an hour and a half, and had a healthy group of fisher folk hanging on every word the entire time, hoping to pick up any tips they could from Lefty’s knowledge bomb. Yours truly had to take notes in shorthand just to keep up with the incredible amount of fishing knowledge being dispersed. (The photo below is just one of four pages of notes taken during the talk).

For all the great one liners and tips though, the best part of Lefty was that after a long day of talking and gabbing, he was set to hop in the car and head to the airport when i finally got up the nerve to ask for a photo. He was exhausted as hell, and could have easily (and understandably) said “no”. Instead he smiled and grinned as Greg Welander (from Sportsman’s Finest) snapped the great photo above.

I was already a huge fan of the myth, now i’m a fan of the man as well.

Thank you for everything Lefty.