This year's favorite fish
Reflecting on some favorite friends (finned and non-finned) after a great year, and ten fishtastic links to start your fly fishing week off right.
Starting with gratitude
Wow—we got soaked this week on the west coast. (Check out Snoqualmie Falls [thanks RPB]. And it sounds like east coasters are frozen. As we wind down the year, I wanted to send out an atmospheric river of gratitude. I had a lot of fishy adventures, thanks in part to all the great classes and outings we had together.
All told we had six class groups through Portland Community College and 60 new students trying out fly fishing, as well as our TroutFest outing to the Deschutes, our tying nights, and various other lunches, coffees, casual river runs, and more. So as we get toward 2026, I wanted to share a few favorites. And maybe you'll share yours with me in return?
Favorite fish of the year
Let's start with some fave fish. I'll divide this up into two categories: fish I caught, and fish others caught. I'm grateful to be at the stage in my angling where the latter matters more and more with each passing year.
Favorite fish I caught
My favorite fish of the year came fairly early: My first carp on the fly, twenty minutes from home, in May. This was a new-to-me species I figured out myself, (technique, locations, etc.) which made it feel special. And it came during a hard time to catch carp, while they were spawning. The take was distinctive (it's almost a nibble or jiggle as the fish sucks up the fly in its bony mouth) and the fight was hard, even with this small specimen. I'm excited to do more carp fishing next spring, it's just so close to town.
Favorite fish others caught:
There were a couple fish I didn't catch that meant a lot to me, in part because they represent friendship, and shared experience around the river.
Here's Dave, with his first Montana trout. We rendezvoused on a fluke of a schedule coincidence, and had a great day together on the Madison, rekindling an old friendship, before he went on for an epic week across the state.
And here's Wolfie's first Deschutes trout. He stuck this one in an evening session at TroutFest, off the grass behind the Imperial, as the CFS crew cheered him on. I hope the 2026 TroutFest dates (May 28th-30th) are in your calendar!
Did you favorite fish of the year? Please share them! I'll compile and add some to the next few newsletter editions.
Ten Foot Leaders ➰
Ten(-ish) fishy links to start your week with trout in the tabs.
Mindset 🧘♂️
There are a couple strong analogs to learning to cast a fly rod in the broader sports instruction world. Swinging a golf club is one of them. Developing your tennis stroke is another. So much so with tennis that "The Inner Game of Tennis" is one of my most recommend books on the philosophical aspects of casting a fly rod. So, I humbly present this account of a passionate amateur attending an elite European tennis camp.
"Trying to do the drill and messing up is a part of life. It is in fact the point of the drills. You should be messing up because it means you are trying. You are failing toward understanding."
Read it, and transpose your own fly casting journey. You are practicing fly casting when you're not fishing, right? (link)
Environment ⛰️
Have a flip through this size-adjusted tour of life on earth, from a strand of DNA to the gigantic Pando cluster, from internet joy bringer Neal Agrawal. Show a little kid (or invite your inner child) for double-awe. Pretty incredible. (link)
Along similar lines (see what I did there?), aquatic entomologists updated a classic (1939) diagram of the evolutionary progression of caddisflies in "The early evolution of caddisflies: Milne and Milne revisited," presented last year in Quito, Ecuador, in the Proceedings of the 18th International Symposium on Trichoptera. One neat part about science is it'll never run out of things to try to understand and classify even more. (link)
The updated 3D evolutionary diagram of caddisfly groups (left) and original phylogenetic tree diagram
If biology isn't your bag, how about connecting trout motion and the tokamak physics needed for fusion reactions? Integrative designer Matt Webb considers the possible AI-driven, machine-explored realms of physics that may be able to eventually drive the wild child fusion reaction, and the natural structures that might inform them. Among the myriad interesting conclusions, there's this one: Our idea of fish swimming because they generate thrust their tails is only a small part of the story:
Vortices in the water are generated by the skin, and the side-to-side movement of a trout is the fish slipping between the vortices, pinballing between them, propelled on them like a boat on wind. (Shown, says the article, by the fact a dead trout on a line in moving water will still exhibit the characteristic swimming action.)
All of which leads to this REMARKABLE line:
"Fish don’t swim, they’re swum."
🤯
Here's Matt's thought-provoking assemblage, and the original page from The Art of Nature, Fish Swimming (2007), from which we get this concept image:
Tools 🎣
🎥 A curious solo traveler, a mindset of openness and flexibility, and an untamed landscape. These are the ingredients for wild adventure at the heart of an Englishman named Perry's travelogue "4 weeks, 3 rivers, solo fly fishing, packrafting and wild camping Patagonia," our favorite film this week. Perry takes his packraft down the Aluminé, the Limay Medio and the Caleufú, fishing and capturing footage all the way down. There's so much to love about how Perry travels, namely light. He's honest about his failures and successes, his setbacks and great moments. It's clear his attitude is the best tool in his box. (link)
Technique 🤺
It's drawdown season in a lot of reservoirs here out west, which means as our seasonal torrential rains arrive (like this week's Atmospheric River) water managers let reservoirs run out, to flush out silt, and allow the out-migration of juvenile salmonids. This creates a fishing opportunity above the dam, before winter rains fill the reservoir up again, writes Zach Urness in the Salem Statesman Journal. How? In the little creeks that remain at the bottom of the former reservoir. Rivers inside of lakes? What doesn't a river run through? If you're itching for trout action, take a look and see if there are any near you. Just be ready to get muddy. (link)
Conservation 🌲
The frequency and intensity of deep drawdowns throughout the Willamette River system are being considered by the Army Corps of Engineers. It's considering the next decade of infrastructure operations in the watershed and asking for public input. There are currently four big reservoirs inhibiting fish passage. The Native Fish Society's POV is that the current proposed options, while incorporating deep drawdowns, don't do enough toward removing hydropower-only dams entirely. I'd imagine it's a negligible source of generation and creates unnecessary impediment to fish passage. Anyway. Comment is now open, and the future of salmon and steelhead in that system is 100% impacted by the outcome. (link)
After the Forked Deer River in West Tennessee flooded in 2010, the farmland in the flood plain, which was inundated with sand, was instead given back to the river as engineered wetland. The result? A new state park, and a boom in local outdoor recreation. Aimee Rawlins at Reasons to be Cheerful has the story, part of its look at solutions taking shape in the Mississippi River basin. (link)
Community 🏘️
Freeflow Institute founder Chandra Brown writes in The Guardian about a community effort to remove a dead juvenile fin whale washed up near Anchorage. There's a headstrong character driving the effort, a Creationist hard-charging military man, the sort of contrarian only Alaska can shape. But what makes the story unique is the way the different shades of cooperation around the massive, stinky cetaceous task at hand—from tribes, to bureaucrats, to scientists, to poets—influence the prime mover's own evolving perspective. (link) Related, CFS buddy Chris Erickson wrote about the Whale Fall, perhaps the heaviest metal of all the heavy metal things that happen in the ocean. (link)
Anglers in Maine are responding to a lawsuit that seeks to abolish fly fishing-only waters in the state, on the grounds that fly fishing is an elite, expensive hobby unattainable to regular folks. Here's a rare YouTube video (a local news broadcast) where there seems to be a consensus in the comments among dirtbag fly anglers (my people). (link)
More from Current Flow State
Here's more of what's been happening recently:
Making it
The mug wall has always represented more than just the accomplishment of becoming a guide on the river.
Understanding all the differences with measurements in fly fishing can feel like it requires a math degree, or some sort alchemy.
Dig in to understand the main measurements, how they work, and where they came from. And then, forget what you learned and just go for what feels right.
Nets are for protection. They protect two things: the fish, and the angler's ego. Read the CFS lowdown about net styles, the perils of netting fish for your friends, and why nets are an essential carry to make sure you've got it bagged up
Nick Parish
Nick Parish
Nick Parish
Nick Parish
Nick Parish
What do a legendary surfer, Hollywood director Christopher Guest, and zen archers have in common?
Nick Parish
Learning to cast a fly rod like Harry Potter uses his wand.
Nick Parish
Are Grateful Dead collabs the sign that outdoor brands have jumped the shark? A look at Simms latest, and the value of high-quality gear.
That's it for this week! Current Flow State is a weekly newsletter from me, Nick Parish.
What's a more outrageous connection than fly fishing and fusion power generation? Tell me on Bluesky 🦋, Instagram 📸, YouTube 🎥, or the Fishcord 💬.
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