I admit to being a self-taught fly fisher. I had no role models to learn from when I took up the sport years ago.
The only anglers I knew were spin or bait enthusiasts, and they wondered why I’d bother with a fly rod. I wondered that, too, when I bought a rod and tried to cast with it, relying on books and videos. Being your own instructor is a dodgy business. You’re like the lawyer who insists on handling his own divorce and winds up paying twice what he expected in alimony. There are easier ways to go about it.
When I hit a brick wall, I began visiting the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club to practice. It’s one of the great resources anywhere for f ly fishers, and everyone is welcome. The club, situated in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, offers an oasis of calm amid the bustle of the city, a meditative space where anglers can soak up technique and fly-fishing lore. Often, I just sat on a bench and observed, wishing I could buy a beer at the wonderful old lodge and let the hours drift by. I’d talked myself into believing I was fairly proficient with my rod, but that’s a mistake autodidacts make. We overvalue what we achieve. At the club, I realized I was still a rank amateur.
Fly casting is an art, and it can require a lifetime to perfect. At the pools, I met anglers who qualified as casting royalty, certified pros who conducted classes and had won prizes for their accuracy and ability to cast for distance. There were also young prodigies around, the Mozarts of the fly rod, none more celebrated in those days than Steve Rajeff, still in his teens, who grew up around the corner. At the age of ten, Steve showed such promise he caught the eye of Mel Krieger, later a famous casting instructor, who helped him refine his technique and urged him to practice daily. Krieger’s book, The Essence of Flycasting, would go through many printings and be used at casting schools around the world.
It didn’t take Rajeff long to shine. After just a few weeks, he won a club tournament for dry-fly accuracy, defeating Krieger and all the other adult entrants. He went on to become the 45time Grand All-Around Champion of the American Casting Association and its 14-time World Champion. He still holds the ACA record for casting a fly with one hand (243 feet) and shares the record for casting a sinking head (190 feet). The current darling on the fly-casting scene is Maxine McCormick of Portland, Oregon, another prodigy. Originally from San Francisco, she took up the sport as a child under the tutelage of her father, a gifted caster himself. Maxine proved to be a natural. When she was 12, in 2016, she traveled to Estonia to compete in a tournament despite being just five feet tall. She weighed only a hundred pounds, but she won the women’s gold medal for fly-casting accuracy and the bronze in the two-handed salmon rod distance-casting event. Two years later, in wintry weather on the coast of Britain, she turned the bronze into gold with a two-handed salmon rod cast of 189 feet. She has already tied the legendary Joan Wulff’s record of casting 161 feet with one hand.
Even Steve Rajeff found her impressive. “Her casting loop, the rolling shape a fly line takes, it’s like every one is the same,” he said. There’s no shortage of these casting tournaments, I learned, and anyone can participate. If you are eager for a challenge, consider entering the World Championship in Gaustablikk, Norway, this August. That’s in the scenic Telemark ski region, where you can fish for trout and arctic char in eight hundred different lakes. It’ll cost you 850 euros (not counting airfare) for the entry fee, a hotel room, and the awards banquet on the top of Gaustatopped Mountain at an elevation of 6177 feet. Anglers afflicted with agoraphobia needn’t worry. “All participants will be carried carefully by the train inside the mountain to reach the peak,” the sponsors reassuringly advise us, although a train ride inside a mountain still worries me a little.
Although fly casting isn’t yet a mainstream sport, its stars do gain a measure of celebrity. They land endorsement deals, appearance fees, and invitations to speak at banquets. They rely on coaches to iron out the kinks in their strokes, just as ballplayers and boxers do. Chris Korich, another Golden Gate veteran, is Maxine’s coach of choice. He’s in the ACA Hall of Fame and has earned a perfect score of 100 for dry-fly, trout, and bass-bug accuracy. “Pound for pound, Maxine’s the best fly caster on planet earth,” he believes, “and she doesn’t like to lose.”
But Maxine, alas, is growing up. She no longer practices every day and talks about giving up the tournament routine. She’s interested in snowboarding, hanging out with her friends, meeting boys (presumably), and attending college to become a veterinarian. For all his dedication, Korich may not be able to turn the tide, although to judge by his website, he keeps plenty busy on other fronts. I’m still a mediocre fly caster after all these years, so I thought maybe I could hire Chris for a lesson, but the going rate is $360 an hour. I could also join a group clinic for $90 or take an online course at $19.99 per month. I passed on all the options, but the website made me feel good about myself. I wasn’t the only one still struggling to be less mediocre.
Though I couldn’t afford Chris’s personal attention, I enjoyed the two free videos he’s posted. Korich is all about fundamentals, a mindset he picked up from his dad, who was also a coach. If you want to master the skills, he insists, you’ve got to do the drills. He suggests we check out Stephen Curry of the Warriors, who runs through the basics — eight-foot jumper, easy layup — while warming up before every game, even though he’s among the best hoopsters in the NBA.
Chris also offers a simple drill to address the casting flaw I’d call flailing, although he doesn’t use that word. When I’m on a stream in the midst of a good hatch, I become excited, and my casting discipline falls apart. I start to flail, waving around my rod and increasing the force of my back cast and forward cast. That, as we all know, is a surefire way to put down the trout. Chris points out that the correct casting motion isn’t really back and forth. It should be up and down, with your arm close to your body to conserve energy. Flailing makes us tired. Gravity drags down your arm, and the weight of it wears on you. To watch Chris in action is to witness a model of efficiency. There’s no waste in his stroke and no sense that he’s about to lose control.
The best casting tip I’ve received came about by accident. One warm June morning, I found myself on the upper Sacramento with clouds of caddis on the wing. As usual, I tensed up with anticipation, fumbling to tie on an Elk Hair dry and throwing out the first of many off-kilter casts. Of course, I soon began to flail, trying to reach a pool on the opposite bank where I saw countless rises and falling short each time. My frustration grew in direct proportion to the time I stood there cussing and winding up for another javelin toss. You’d think I was trying out for a spot on our Olympic team.
I doubt I’d have raised a trout at all if not for a fly fisher who took pity on me. In books and films, such benefactors are older, wiser, and often bearded and smoking a pipe, but this guy was a mere snip twenty years my junior. He called me “sir” while reminding me I had lots of good water close by that I could reach, and that I could better my chances if I kept moving instead of planting myself in a single spot, the one I’d already spoiled by my flailing. This little chat lasted no more than three minutes, but I still recall his parting words and repeat them like a mantra whenever there’s a hatch and I feel a fit of flailing coming on. Relax. Don’t try so hard. Keep moving.
