Flick, Flick, Womp, Womp
The key to fly casting is sound effects — and the nation's best instructor

By Elizabeth Royte

Appropriately, Mel Krieger's International School of Fly Fishing floats. With no fixed locale, the school moves wherever the fish are biting, be it Norway's Gaula River, Argentina's Traful, or — in a first-time off-season seminar closer to home this month — northern California's Fall River.

In my case, I'm at a casting club in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, taking a one-day lesson from Mel, a septuagenarian fisherman who literally wrote the book on the sport (titled, aptly enough, The Essence of Flycasting) and has taught clients on every continent save Africa and Antarctica. There's so much mystique surrounding both the sport and my instructor that I have come prepared to be intimidated. Plus, it looks hard. "It's not that terrible," Mel reassures me. "It's a Huck Finn kind of thing."

His prodding, if not his metaphoric clarity, carries me through knot tying, proper equipment, and reading the water. Around the fishless practice ponds I cast, cast, cast, and have no idea what's happening with the yards of line I release from my reel. Mel stands behind me, talking softly in my ear, his left hand on my shoulder, his right hand avuncularly over mine. "Flick, flick," he says, dropping the tiny fly enticingly upon the water. "Womp, womp," he instructs.

By day's end I begin to relax. "You won't learn in 30 minutes," Mel says, "but it's not something only a gifted athlete can do, either. It's something in between." On my last cast, my womp becomes inspired: The line floats, as if possessed by a spirit, into the platonically ideal arc, a fluid ellipse that never sees an angle.

To master your own womp, consider booking Mel's next seminar ($490), to be held November 14-15 at Lava Creek Lodge, 50 miles east of Redding, California. For a list of other classes, call 800-669-3474.