Remembering Lefty Kreh

Last week, I received the sad news that my friend Lefty Kreh passed away at 93 years of age. At the moment I heard the news I felt a hole in my heart and an even larger hole in the universe.

For those who didn’t know Lefty, he was beyond any doubt the absolute best there was at fly casting and even better at instructing others how to do the same. He was also a great photographer and a fantastic instructor in that art form. But even beyond those two talents, he was by far the most giving person I have ever met.

I saw quite a bit of Lefty when I was active with the Mason-Dixon Outdoor Writers, as he too was a member. We went on several fishing trips and had meetings at Boyd Pfeiffer’s home in Maryland.

At the first meeting, Lefty found out I was not a member of the fly fishing fraternity. He invited me to his home and spent a few hours at a nearby pond teaching one of the most uncoordinated people on earth how to cast a fly line. By the end of the session, I was doing pretty well, and once back at his home, he gave me the fly rod and reel I was using. Of course, I still have that outfit.

Lefty had one other major talent: he could look at some common thing and see 40 different uses. When I see a paper clip, I see a tool for clipping papers together. Lefty saw a pipe cleaner, fishing hook extractor, a lock pick and who knows how many other things.

His overriding talent was Lefty’s ability to teach others how to do the things at which he was so proficient. There are several other outdoor writers who are very good instructors, including George Poveromo, Mark Sosin, and Pete Barrett, and even your humble correspondent has run a few successful seminars. None of us could hold a candle to Lefty. His ability to teach was made even more successful not just by his knowledge of the subject, but also his razor-sharp wit and easygoing manner.

I will never forget his willingness to write for the Mid-Atlantic Edition of the Fisherman Magazine when I was the editor. I know for a fact he could have made so much more money writing for the larger publications, but he was willing to help me out.

Finally, I don’t think we will ever see the likes of Lefty Kreh again. He was truly a fine man and one of a kind who certainly leaves a very large hole in the universe.

Big tuna

The charter boat A Salt Weapon out of Oregon Inlet has set a new North Carolina state record with an 877-pound bluefin caught on the very last day of the season. The angler on the boat was Scott Chambers from Townsend.

This has been a very good year for bluefin tuna off the North Carolina coast, with several fish well over the 500-pound mark. A few tuna exceeding the 877-pounder were taken, but since they were sold, they did not qualify for the record.

The capture season for giant bluefin tuna ended March 17, but anglers may still play catch-and-release with these fish. I have played that game and found it a lot of fun when I was younger.

Big money

The U.S. Department of Interior has awarded $8,304,999 to the State of Delaware for our hunting and fishing projects. Of this total, $3,519,175 will go to fisheries and $4,785,824 will go to hunting projects. All of this money is supplied by fishermen and hunters who purchase hunting and fishing licenses, and buy supplies like fish hooks and tree stands. The supplies have a 5 percent excise tax that adds to the license money. 

The state then selects projects that can qualify under federal law for the use of these funds.  

These projects include the recently improved boat ramp in Seaford, the new ramp in Slaughter Beach, and repairs to parking lots at various boat ramps, fishing piers and other access areas.

Once approved, the state supplies $1 while the feds supply $3 for every project.  

Unfortunately, none of this money may be used for some desperately needed dredging projects across the state. Since the federal government dropped dredging most of Delaware’s waterways, we have scrambled to raise the $3 million needed to maintain dredging in locations like Rehoboth Bay, Indian River Bay, the Murderkill River and St. Augustine. We raised the boat registration by 100 percent, but that only brought in half the money. We need to come up with the other half in a sustainable manner that can be depended on every year.