They’re Hooked for Life : These Fly-Fishing Experts Are Happy to Share Their Angling Addictions

Lefty Kreh was at the casting pool showing a star-struck, middle-aged woman how to handle a fly rod.

Dave Whitlock held a group mesmerized discussing the virtues of his Dave’s Bright Spot Carpenter Ant, an artificial fly.

Mel Krieger, Les Eichhorn, Poul Jorgensen, Gary LaFontaine, Lani Waller, Steve Rajeff . . . for fly-fishing fanatics, it was a gathering of the greats--a stream of dreams.

In perspective, the recent Fly-Fishing Fair at Bob Marriott’s store in Fullerton was like a weekend golfer mingling with Palmer, Nicklaus, Hogan and Faldo--live and all in one place, giving tips and telling tales.

These are the men who tie the flies that fool the fish that fill the frames with photos of unforgettable times. They fish all of the traditional streams and write the books that always sell, even though you thought nothing more significant could be written about the sport.

They are the gurus who, with a word about a new technique or a new killer fly, can send their disciples rushing out of the boardrooms to the nearest creek. Some millionaires would trade their portfolios to duplicate the magic these men perform.

They might not be millionaires, but they each make a good living from the sport. None ever planned it that way. In the beginning, they were all merely kids who liked to fish. They haven’t forgotten that.

LES EICHHORN

Eichhorn grew up in Los Angeles and Seal Beach.

“When I was about 6 years old, my grandfather used to take me out on the breakwater in San Pedro . . . cane poles and bobbers, catching barracuda and stuff like that, right off the rocks,” he said.

Eichhorn prefers saltwater fly-fishing, and he isn’t a male chauvinist.

“I’ve always been a believer that ladies can fly-fish as well as men,” he said. “I had one out in the Florida Keys. She caught about a 90-pound tarpon.”

But as the guide held up the fish’s head for Eichhorn to take a picture before releasing it, Eichhorn said: “All of a sudden out of the corner of my eye there was a hammerhead shark 15 feet long. You know how ugly those things are. They’ve got one eye over here and an eye over there, with a big mouth in the middle. Grabbed the tarpon and tore away. You talk about a frightening experience. That lady shook for 20 minutes.”

STEVE RAJEFF

Rajeff might be the best fly-caster in the country. He learned at a San Francisco casting club’s free clinic for kids when he was 10. He won the American Casting Assn. national title at 15 and simply keeps adding to it.

“I developed a knack for it,” he said. “I envisioned the guys with the best job were these guys who used to catch tuna on a rod and line and hook . . . a tuna hauler, that’s what I really wanted to be.”

Rajeff gets absorbed in what he’s doing.

“I was fishing in the boondocks up in Alaska and thinking one of my guests was watching me,” he said. “I started talking: ‘Come on over here, it’s a great spot.’ I didn’t get an answer, so I turned around. It was a bear sitting there.”

DAVE WHITLOCK

Whitlock lives in the Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas, near the White and Northfork rivers--rivers that have produced several line-class records for brown trout.

“I started fishing when I was 3 or 4 years old, just for little bluegill with a cane pole,” he said.

His success hasn’t gone to his head. Fishing can be humbling.

“I was in Boise, Idaho, once doing an all-day seminar in the public park for the casting club there,” he said. “I was trying to describe a certain cast to them and said, ‘If I had some water, I could show you,’ and they said, ‘Well, the Boise River is just a couple of hundred yards over.’ ”

Whitlock, in street shoes and sport clothes, wasn’t dressed for fishing, but he went, anyway, with more than a hundred people following.

“I walked out on a little rock in the stream, doing the demonstration,” he said. “(The fly) drifted down, and as I went to pick it up, the next thing I knew, water was going over the top of me. There I was on the bottom, going down the river. I came up, waded ashore and got back out on the rock and started casting again. No one said a word, and I was so uncool, I didn’t know what to do other than just to go ahead and get the damn demonstration done.

“Anyway, I got back to the hotel with this green slime all over me, and (his wife) Joanne said: ‘How’d your day go?’ and I said, ‘Don’t ask.’ ”

When Whitlock visited Boise again a year later, he was presented with an award: the rock.

POUL JORGENSEN

Strange things happen to the best of them. Jorgensen was fishing one time with Boyd Pfeiffer, an outdoors writer from Baltimore. They were in Pfeiffer’s boat when the engine quit.

“He took the cover off the engine to work on it, and I felt something on my feet,” Jorgensen said. “I looked down and I was standing in water. I said, ‘Boyd, we’re sinking!’ He said, ‘Oh, it’s just a little bit of water.’

“I said, ‘There’s a foot of water and it’s coming in the back of the boat. What do we do now?’

“He said, ‘You might as well start fishing, because we’re not going anywhere.’ ”

Pfeiffer had forgotten to put in his drain plugs. Another boat rescued them.

LEFTY KREH

Kreh is an instructor, a fly-tyer, an expert caster, a storyteller and one of the first true outdoors writers, now in his 45th year in the profession.

“My father died in 1932 at the height of the Depression,” he said. “I was 6 years old, had a sister who was 4 1/2, a brother who was 3 and one 6 months old. In those days, people were really poor.

“But in central Maryland, you had lots of good fishing streams, so I did a lot of fishing. That’s the only thing a poor person could afford to do.

“I found out you could get 10 cents a pound for catfish. Eleven cents let you get in the movies, with a bag of popcorn. So instead of working on farms every summer, I did bush-bobbing. You hang these little short strings with hooks baited on ‘em on the limbs hanging down at night, and the catfish go along and grab ‘em and take off, and the limb just sits there and plays ‘em.”

GARY LaFONTAINE

A proponent of the scientific approach to fishing, LaFontaine did research on caddis flies that cost $18,000.

“I can remember the first trout I caught on a fly rod,” he said. “I was 9. It was on a brook in Connecticut. I didn’t know what I was doing. I flailed around for a full year and caught one nine-inch rainbow, (which) was the cause of my addiction.”

LaFontaine is a school psychologist at Deer Lodge, Mont., a prison town. He works with children of the inmates, calls them “Gary’s Guerrillas.”

“Some of them end up fly-fishing,” he said, “but we don’t push it.”

LANI WALLER

Waller grew up in Kansas City, Mo., fishing, he said, in “farm ponds and creeks, chasing the local talent, just using worms and a bobber and an old cane pole . . . before it got complicated.”

He added: “I had an addiction for it. My dad always told the story about taking me catfishing when I was 4 or 5 years old, and that I just went crazy when I caught a fish.

“When we came out from the Midwest, I saw mountains and rivers and tall green trees I’d never seen before. I saw rivers that weren’t the color of coffee but were crystal clear. Then I found steelhead rivers, and here were trout that were measured in pounds instead of inches. It just dazzled me.”

Ask Waller about steelhead fishing and be prepared for a rhapsody: “A restless, vagabond trout with all the energy and power of a salmon, plus all the delicate grace and pastel colorings of the seasons themselves: the polished silver and cold steel of winter and the reds of autumn--all in one fish.”

MEL KRIEGER

“I lived in Chicago, and there was a park nearby called Humboldt Park,” Krieger said. “There was a lagoon with sunfish that were maybe two or three inches long. Somebody showed us how to bend a pin and put a little piece of bread on it. I was so intrigued, I’d go there every chance I’d get. But it wasn’t until I was 19 or 20 that I took up fishing seriously.”

He never thought he’d make a living from it. “Farthest thought from my mind,” he said.

Doesn’t he feel guilty?

“Never.”