A co-worker attended some years ago. I think he viewed it as being worthwhile. He's passed on to me a few tips and techniques that he learned there.
However.... I've used some of the tips and techniques he passed on and while the reasoning behind them make all sorts of sense, the fish themselves apparently do not attend this seminar.
So in pretty short order they proved to us that the "always do this" and "fish always do that" rules from the classes are not rules at all but are simply things that fish sometimes do when they feel like doing it. The rest of the time they do something else.
I have found over the past 29 years of fishing in this region that the most valuable and consistent techniques I have learned have all come from longtime local fisherman in the specific area we fish in. The techniques we use up the north end of Vancouver Island for salmon are very different than the techniques we use in Puget Sound, for example.
And even then, there are plenty of instances of fish who prove to be the exception to the accepted local "rules."
In fact in all the years I've been fishing--- ocean fishing in Hawaii, river and lake fishing here and in BC and the Yukon, and salt water fishing here and in BC--- I have only found one rule to be universally true and this I learned years ago from a college friend during a Land Rover trip in the Yukon. My friend's rule is: If you know for sure a fish is there and if you put something it's really interested in directly in front of its nose it will most likely bite it.
My guess is that this is why they call this activity "fishing," not "catching."