She’s a world-class fly caster. She’s also just 14 years old
Maxine McCormick made it clear early on that she had a gift
As the competitors in the 2016 Fly Casting World Championships arrived at their hotel in Nelijarve, Estonia, some noticed a 12-year-old girl jumping on the hotel’s trampoline.
The girl, Maxine McCormick of San Francisco, was not a tourist. She was their competition.
Maxine was competing in four events in the biennial championships of this niche sport, in which the world’s best handlers of flies and rods test their skills in a series of accuracy and distance competitions. Maxine, instead of tinkering with her equipment before the competition or fretting over the wind, spent most of her time on the trampoline, jumping or lying down and reading on it. Once, she fell asleep.
Then she trounced every other woman in the competition’s most popular event, trout accuracy, in which competitors cast into a series of rings.
Her score was also higher than those of all the men except one: her coach, Chris Korich. She placed third in the salmon distance event, using back muscles honed by hours of tree climbing to propel her line
127 feet (39 metres).
“She’s the most efficient fly caster on the planet,” said Korich, who’s been coaching Maxine since 2013.
In the five years since Maxine began fly casting — which she describes as “fly fishing without the fish” — she has become the sport’s youngest champion. And this weekend, at 14, she defended her accuracy title at the world championships in England with a score of 52 in the women’s division — 21 points clear of the second-place finisher. She also won the salmon distance category.
“I never knew I would become this good at anything,” Maxine said.
Anita Strand, the nine-time world champion caster from Norway who took silver in the 2016 accuracy event, recalled watching in awe as Maxine pivoted between two existences — world champion fly caster and child.
Now, she’s no longer the tiny girl on the trampoline. She’s a teenager, taller and stronger. At practice, she’s focused and quiet, and when she starts casting, her dark eyes narrow to a frown as she attacks her target.
Maxine’s speedy journey to casting supremacy began when her father, Glenn McCormick, took her to the Golden Gate Angling & Casting Club in San Francisco in 2013. Like most people who come to the club’s pools, he simply wanted to become a better fisherman.
He didn’t know about the sport of casting, which began in the U.S. 150 years ago. The sport has faded into obscurity, but there’s still a robust community of local clubs around the U.S., as well as national and international tournaments.
It’s a tiny sport, but the clubs offer people a chance to improve the distance and accuracy of their cast, which leads to more productive fishing.
About 75 people compete in yearly national tournaments, and there are about 150 elite competitive casters throughout the U.S.
Maxine’s gift quickly became apparent. In the same way tennis prodigies are somehow able to get extra spin and power on the ball from their first days on a court, Maxine could make the fly come off the tip of her rod with a zip and efficiency that young casters rarely have, her father said.
She also had access to local clubs that counted world champions as members, including Korich, an 11-time world champion. Temperate weather also helped, allowing year-round practice.
By the time Maxine was 10, she was regularly outscoring all the women at national tournaments.