Weekly Update
Leaders: Wisdom never expires
It's the June edition of Leaders, our links roundup, featuring the big public lands battle, the wisdom of guides and land-watchers, gear reviews, technique primers, and more.
Nick Parish
Forever seeking flow.
Meditations
Skate or Fly: How two outsider sports foster the same creative flow state
From boardslides to redsides, meet a few notable skaters who fly-fish, and identify the big areas the sports have in common, built around getting into the flow state.
CFS News
TroutFest 2025, debriefed: We came, we saw, we fished...we won the trivia contest!
Here's what went down at the first-ever Maupin Meetup during the Deschutes River Alliance's TroutFest.
How To
Tap into the Wisdom of the Guides
Gleaning advice for taking your first guided fly-fishing trip from legendary fly-fishing guides and a tome that's stood the test of time.
Meditations
Nirvana on the Deschutes: The salmonfly hatch with no hookups
Deciding to fish the salmonfly hatch on the Deschutes with hookless flies
How To
30 micro-lessons for the fly-curious to learn to fish
We're off and running on a marathon of Bluesky posting to kick off this year's trout season. Try one every day, and in a month you'll be an angler!
Weekly Update
Rigged for spring
it's the May edition of Leaders, our links roundup, featuring a bevy of great PNW events, primers on fish handling, and an intro to Trout Spey.
How To
One of the best ways to improve your fly fishing: Download our free fishing log template
All the theory, workflows, and downloadable tools you need to build one of the most important habits of a fly angler.
Weekly Update
Floods, anarchy, and river gods
The season kicks off with a rush of fun, with the TroutFest agenda dropping, a little soliloquy, a report from our book club, and my first significant fish of the new season.
CFS News
TroutFest 2025: The schedule drops
We're just over a month away from TroutFest 2025 in Maupin, OR, and the Deschutes River Alliance has released the first schedule of events.
Books
Read By the River: James C. Scott's In Praise of Floods
Saving dolphins, propitiating river spirits, and the future of history
Meditations
Fish around and find out
Ten ways to make fly fishing a bigger part of your life
Learn
Pillar 1: Mindset
Start here. Why do we fish? How do we venture boldly into the outdoors?
Learn
Pillar 3: Tools
What stuff do I need? Less than you think.
Learn
Pillar 2: Environment
Where do fish live? How can we find them? All about watersheds, rivers, and all those who live in them.
Learn
Pillar 4: Technique
Casting, fly presentation, dry flies, nymphing, streamers and more.
Learn
Pillar 5: Conservation
How to steward these gifts for the next generation
Learn
Pillar 6: Community
Building your support network inside the sport by connecting with like-minded people.
Meditations
Take your time: Ten ways to make fly fishing a bigger part of your life
We have a motto around here: "Make fly fishing a bigger part of your life." Here are ten ways to work in more time on the water, and time spent feeling fishy.
How To
Hands off, or hands-free?
Yet sometimes you have to get a little dirt on your hands.
Dispatches
This season's most essential piece of fly-fishing gear
The dirt-cheap wonder-tool any angler can use to become legendary.
Meditations
No drag, just drift
Striving to get even with the flow
CFS News
The Intro to Fly Fishing class in the spotlight
A short video introduction to the Portland Community College Intro to Fly Fishing course, courtesy student-angler Nathaniel Chapman
Weekly Update
Vivid indicators of life
Wading for caddis, fishing nymphs with suspenders
Weekly Update
Fish on film
Roll cameras, because the Fly Fishing Film Tour came to town.
Industry
The Oscars: CFS' 2025 Fly Fishing Film Tour Awards
There are four questions a pretty good fly-fishing film has to answer in order to be considered truly great.
Weekly Update
Rolling your own
If you wish to make a fly rod from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Books
River reads, post-hibernation edition
Grand Canyon dreaming, communing with the fishes, Jackson County's finest, Tokyo shopping, and a great smallmouth bass learning opportunity
Books
Hibernation reads, 2025
When we can't fish and make stories, we read stories. Sometimes those are fly-fishing stories, and sometimes they're not. Here are three that rolled across the bedside table, from the Grand Canyon to the Mariana Trench to the Carhartteratti of Jackson Hole's Persephone Bakery.
Weekly Update
Stand up and tell 'em! 📣
A gentle nudge to find your voice in conservation and activism.
Industry
Don't get GASed 💨
Snow Peak launches a fly-fishing line, avoiding GAS, we find the safest place on the Oregon Coast to be in a tsunami, and more.
Weekly Update
Meanderings: Following the thalweg from the Willamette to the Seine
First flies, finding the thalweg, good eau in Paris, and some riparian art
How To
Leaky waders and slinky links
Here's another thing to do this winter: Fix your waders. And, while you're at it, get stoked with a visit to one of the fly-fishing film fests, and generally click your heart out with some buttery links.
Industry
Immerse yourself with Kwintesencja
Take fifteen minutes, and be transported.
CFS News
Watersheds and watching flies
Zoom out to conserve, zoom in to observe, zoom over to the Grand Fir tonight to have a drink and a bite.
Weekly Update
Creek Freaks and Trout Whisperers: Advocacy from the Deschutes to the Chattahoochee
100 subscribers, Maupin in May, the DRA's Deschutes fight expands, a new blueprint for anadromous activism, and a club report from ATL.