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Sad News - Lefty Kreh

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bonefishdick

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A life well lived but I am saddened.  I was fortunate enough to meet Lefty several times at the Somerset show.  His ability to cast a flyrod is legend.  I was also fortunate enough to get him to sign his casting book for me.  RIP Lefty.  You were not a Deceiver but a real gentleman.

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i really liked the ny times piece. bvk-1 is a strain of anthrax. who knew

 

 

 

Lefty Kreh, one of the pre-eminent sport fishermen of his time, died on Wednesday at his home in Cockeysville, Md., north of Baltimore. He was 93.

His granddaughter Sammantha Aus said the cause was congestive heart failure.

For a half century, Mr. Kreh, a globe-trotting fisherman, journalist and author, was a colorful and highly influential figure in both freshwater and saltwater fly-fishing. In countless articles and more than 30 books, in videos, on television and at innumerable public appearances, he converted his vast experience into lucid observations and practical advice for anglers at all levels.

Mr. Kreh was always willing to re-examine traditional ideas in a sport laden with them. As he said about fly-fishing for trout in his book “Advanced Fly Fishing Techniques” (1994): “I feel that many people who are not really versed in the sport have either written or spoken about it, and they have attempted to create a concept that this is a very difficult sport to master. That simply isn’t true.”

While fly angling in fresh water for fish like trout and salmon is an old sport, saltwater fly-fishing is comparatively new, and Mr. Kreh was one of its earliest champions. His book “Fly Fishing in Salt Water,” which he said he wrote “not to make money, but so I didn’t have to answer so many darn questions,” was published in 1974 and remains an essential text.

A saltwater fly of Mr. Kreh’s design, Lefty’s Deceiver, is used all over the world, and in 1991 the Postal Service put it on a stamp.

 
Lefty Kreh Remains Ambassador for Fly-Fishing at 87 MAY 5, 2012
 
Mr. Kreh was much in demand as an instructor of fly casting, the easily misperformed skill of unfurling a heavy fishing line to deliver a virtually weightless lure to wary fish. He gave demonstrations to thousands of anglers at his public appearances. Though born left-handed, he could cast with either hand and customarily used his right, which he said was better for teaching right-handed students.
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A saltwater fly of Mr. Kreh’s design, Lefty’s Deceiver, was honored with a Postal Service stamp in 1991.

Mr. Kreh also fished with celebrities like the writer Thomas McGuane, the actor Michael Keaton, the singer Huey Lewis and Yvon Chouinard, founder of the outdoor sports and apparel company Patagonia. All of them appeared with him on the Outdoor Channel fishing show 'Bones'.

Another acolyte is Tom Brokaw, the former NBC News anchor and an avid fisherman. Mr. Brokaw said in a telephone interview this week that Mr. Kreh had helped better his double haul cast, perhaps the hardest in fly fishing. Watching Mr. Kreh cast, Mr. Brokaw said, reminded him of “Derek Jeter at shortstop — it’s all so fluid, and there’s no wasted motion.”

“In Lefty’s system you turn the whole body to the right and then step forward,” he added, “and it’s kind of a ballet step that you make using your arms and your body, and when you do it well, it is really beautiful.”

Bernard Victor Kreh was born on Feb. 26, 1925, in Frederick, Md., the first of four children. His father, Theodore, a bricklayer, died in 1932, and Lefty and his siblings were reared in meager circumstances by his mother, the former Helen Purdy, a homemaker, who later remarried.

He learned to hunt and fish as a boy in the woods and streams of central Maryland, but did not discover fly-fishing, the most challenging form of the sport, until after World War II — after he had served in an Army artillery unit in Europe and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

In 1947, back in Maryland, where he had gained some renown as an expert in fishing smallmouth bass, he came to the attention of Joe Brooks, an outdoor writer a generation older than Mr. Kreh.

“He’d heard about this guy on the Potomac River,” Mr. Kreh said in a telephone interview in 2007, “who was catching far more smallmouth than anyone else.”

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Mr. Kreh tying flies in his workshop at his home in Cockeysville, Md., in 2007. CreditSammantha Aus 

 

Mr. Brooks, who would become a famous angler in his own right, asked Mr. Kreh to guide him for smallmouth bass on the Potomac.

Watching Mr. Brooks cast his fly rod with consummate grace and catch lots of fish with his artificial flies was a transforming experience for Mr. Kreh, who until that day had never seen anyone fly-cast. With Mr. Brooks’s help, he bought his first fly rod the next day, and the direction of his career was set.

It was also around this time that Mr. Kreh started working as a shift foreman at the federal government’s bioweapons laboratories at Camp Detrick, later renamed Fort Detrick, in Frederick. He liked the job because its irregular hours allowed him to spend a lot of time outdoors.

Remaining at Fort Detrick until well into the 1960s, Mr. Kreh later became one of three workers there to be infected with anthrax and the only one to survive. Fort Detrick scientists reportedly collected anthrax from Mr. Kreh’s infection and gave it the official substrain name BVK-1.

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Mr. Kreh in a 2015 family photograph. The NBC newsman Tom Brokaw said watching Mr. Kreh reminded him of “Derek Jeter at shortstop — it’s all so fluid, and there’s no wasted motion.”

By the early 1950s, Mr. Kreh had been writing a freelance outdoor column for The Frederick News-Post. He went on to write for other newspapers and the major outdoor magazines before landing in Baltimore as outdoor editor for The Baltimore Sun newspapers, where he remained for 18 years before retiring at age 65.

Mr. Kreh hardly stopped working, though; he continued his busy career as a writer, photographer, casting instructor, product endorser and A-list angling celebrity.

His wife, Evelyn Kreh, who acted as his business manager, died in 2011. In addition to his granddaughter Sammantha, he is survived by a son, Larry; a daughter, Victoria Huffman; a brother, Richard; a half brother, Michael Baumgardner; three more grandchildren; five great-grandchildren and one great-great grandson.

Mr. Kreh’s favorite quarry were bonefish in salt water and smallmouth bass in fresh. In the 2007 interview, he called saltwater fly-fishing “a hell of a lot more of a challenge” than freshwater. In addition to having to play and land much bigger, stronger fish, he said, “You’ve got to be a tremendously better caster.”

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He had this great ability to make everyone he met seem like an old friend.  May we never forget the things he stood for: education, preservation, adventure and having a little bit of fun.  RIP Lefty.

Mind on a permanent vacation. The ocean is my only medication. Wishin' my condition ain't ever gonna go away.
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The one and only time I met Lefty was when I was having lunch at a show by myself and there were 2 chairs left at my table.  "Mind if we share the table?" I looked up and was speechless. Would I mind??????  He and his friend not only sat but were polite in trying to include me in the conversation.  I just pretty much babbled.  A gentleman and a legend in his own time.  I think I just saw a Deceiver land on a cloud over there in the east.  I now know he is in a better place.  Godspeed Mr Kreh, we will all miss you.

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I met him a few times. There was a period in my life when I was spending a lot of time in Roscoe, and I  met all kinds of great people (and a few famous names who were grade A jerks). I consider myself lucky for that. Of the luminaries, the one I was closest to was Poul Jorgensen, and his wonderful partner Carol, Dick Talleur's sister. I spent many an afternoon in Poul's cottage on the Willowemoc, shooting the breeze, arguing fish, sometimes tying flies. Poul loved good-natured needling. He was always telling Polack jokes for my benefit, so I'd have to take a Polack joke and turn it into a joke ahout Danes, which wasn't hard, because, y'know, Danes. At Poul's, you never knew who might show up on any given day. So one afternoon Lefty appears out of the blue. I didn't do much talking that afternoon, I listened to him and Poul banter away. Good times.

 

Lefty's was a life well-lived. A toast to you, Lefty!

 

I'm thinking about a short story...pretty sure it was by Russell Chatham, who was also a good writer in addition to his landscape art. The title I think was Bones. It wasn't just about bonefish, it was about all the bones of angler's past that ended up in the same bay in the Keys where they fished for bonefish. Which to me is a nice and poignant thought.

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I took a casting class from him in the 1970’s in a little town in Pa. I remember him hitting the middle of an x in a exit sign in a high school gym , which he told us he was going to do, did capture some of his teaching , but HE took the whole classes breath away with his ability . God bless him

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1 min ago, bonefishdick said:

Nice buy , always good to snag a little bit of history.

thanks my wife agreed , that there were too many pictures of myself holding fish from all over the country & the Caribbean on the office wall , it was about time there was something about  a baseball pitcher named Lefty ! 

  If it has fins i want to catch it 

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