Personality profile example--Mike Kepka (City Exposed)

Standing belly-button deep in a pool, whipping a 15-foot fly-fishing pole artfully around his body, Bert Rances spends most of his mornings in Golden Gate Park not trying to catch fish.

“There are no fish in the pond. It’s all practice,” said Rances, 61, who has been frequenting the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club’s three pools since he stumbled onto them in 2001 while wandering through the park with his kids.

The rectangular pools are all 180 feet across, and vary in length from 100 to 200 feet. They were built by the Works Progress Administration in 1938 and are revered to this day as some of the best casting pools in the world

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Every April, the club is the site of what it proclaims is the world championship of spey casting, a competition that attracts contestants from as far away as Russia, Japan and Scotland.

Rances has competed four times in the seniors division and came in second last year, but he’s not in it for the glory. 

He lives just a three-minute drive from the club and goes there nearly every day. It’s a refuge from the stresses of more a dozen years of waiting tables.

“Once I’m in the water I feel like I’m in a different world. Everything slows down,” Rances said. “You’re in your own world. The movements I do are very subtle. It’s poetry in motion, in a way.

“I feel relaxed.”

When he’s not serving dinner at McCormick & Kuleto’s near Fisherman’s Wharf, Rances can often be found around the pools working on his casting technique, talking about tying flies for river excursions or catching up on gossip with other club regulars.

Rances is modest about his talent, but when he swirls the hookless fly line into impossible shapes in the air, there’s no denying he’s one of the best.

“He’s just got it. He’s got more natural timing and form than anybody in the club,” said Jay Grant, a marketing and consulting professional who is among the casters and wannabe fishermen who hang out at the pools. “Nobody casts more beautifully than Bert.”

Rances said it’s his passion for fly fishing that keeps him coming back day after day. He’s always trying to improve the minute details.

“Like tai chi or kung fu, in order to achieve the pinnacle of success you just keep on doing it and doing it,” Rances said. “For me it’s this obsession of getting better at it. It’s like this never-ending quest for perfection.”