Oh, Ed Stein remembers what Lefty Kreh said to him early in his fly-fishing experience: ‘‘I don’t think there is much hope for you.’’
Kreh, the late fly-fishing guru, teacher and writer, sure missed on that one.
Stein became one of the great globe-trotting fly-fishermen and now helps others through his Flyfish Traveler company.
His is an odd journey around the world.
Growing up on the North Side (Senn and Mather high schools), he came to fishing later in life. Hard-core anglers usually start as tykes. Stein only found fishing in his 20s, as an offshoot of a couples dinner where the other guy was going fishing the next morning on Geneva Lake. As Stein put it, he didn’t know a bobber from a hook before then.
As he caught the bug, he chased the usual fish: salmon, trout, pike, muskie, bluegills, crappie and perch. He joined Trout Unlimited and was president of the Illinois Steelheaders. Then he traveled to Canada and Alaska, and it was on to more exotic fishing.
Maybe it’s the different path that made meeting with Stein, a retired family-law attorney, at his Highland Park home last month something other than what I am used to in a fishing story. His tales from the courtroom and the world of law were as fascinating as his fishing stories.
He is not just fishing on his trips; he’s visiting another space of life. Fishing was also the great escape from difficult clients, mean lawyers and different judges.
‘‘Fishing, you know, you get away from it all, and your mind is only on fishing and your friends and the surroundings,’’ Stein said. ‘‘So I found that a wonderful outlet, and that eventually became a hobby and a passion.’’
He has fly-fished for sailfish in Guatemala, tarpon in Cuba, peacock bass on the Amazon, tigerfish in Africa, golden dorado in Argentina and roosterfish in Costa Rica.
As exotic as all that sounds, I had to look up half the fish he mentioned when I asked about his favorite world spot in the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean off Africa: giant trevally (GTs), milkfish, triggerfish, bumphead parrotfish, redmouth grouper and Bohar snapper.
He has fished in about 40 counties. This fall, he will make his 15th trip to the Amazon.
On his trips, it’s beyond just fishing. He has collected masks and other artifacts, photos and memories.
He rode a camel in Egypt while on a scuba-diving trip. He learned scuba diving at the long-gone Vern’s Scuba Center on the North Side. He went scuba diving in the Dubai Aquarium (you read that right).
He has flown an ultralight over Victoria Falls, visited the pyramids, went hang-gliding over Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro and rode a horse to the top of the Pacaya Volcano in Guatemala with lava running down.
But behind it all is the art of fly-fishing.
Stein broke down the joy of fly-fishing — by contrast with using spinning or baitcasting gear — as well as anyone I’ve ever heard.
‘‘The difference is this: With a regular rod, whether it’s baitcasting or spinning, you’re casting something out with the stick and reeling it in,’’ he said. ‘‘And when the fish takes it, you set [the hook] with this big stick. With a fly rod, as you know, the line has the weight . . . and then when you’re stripping it in and the fish hits — and all fishermen who know what they’re doing are going to tell you that the best part of fishing is the strike — you feel that strike in your hands.
‘‘I equate it to driving a sports car as opposed to an automatic. I had a lot of sports cars in my day, and you know shifting and downshifting and what have you. And the automatic drives itself.’’
That’s a wickedly good analogy.
It also feels like an analogy for Stein’s life.
Yes, he bumped into Kreh years later. That’s a story for another time.
More about Stein’s catches on a fly and his deluxe worldwide angling is at flyfishtraveler.com.
