An Adorable 11-Year-Old Just Became The Greatest Female Fly Caster Of All Time
by Tom Stienstra Outdoors / September
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s a nascent fly fisherman myself, I know how difficult and frustrating fly fishing can be. Where as with normal fishing you let the fish come to your bait, with fly fishing it’s the other way around, and accuracy is very important. So when I see fly casting prodigies I want to jealously fill their waders with rocks.
Impossible to do that with Maxine McCormick, though. She’s only 11, and adorable, and looks like should be manning a Kool-Aid stand, or bugging her younger brothers with real bugs. Instead she has just become the greatest female fly caster of all time — and is just a half-step behind the best men.
At the U.S. National Casting Championships in Long Beach, Maxine scored a combined score of 289 in three events — 3oo is the maximum score — to win the title and surpass the all-time record for women — 286, set in the 1996 by Canadian champion Brenda McSporran.
“So what happened is that 11-year-old old Maxine just scored higher than any female in the history of the American Casting Association and was only outscored by Steve Rajeff, myself and her father Glenn by just one point,” said Chris Korich of the Golden Gate Casting Club.
