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.
Latest
Blowing off the stink
Whether you're buzzing with holiday excitement or feeling that slack tide of the soul, here are ten fishy detours to transport you.
Making it
Where can you hang your mug on the wall?
Waiting for winter (steelhead)
An earnest start in the search for a dreary season chrome lifeline, six months until TroutFest, and ten fishy links to start your week off right.
Harness your inner salmon goddess
Miss Norway, it me. Tying night success, updates from the alchemist's cave, and ten(-ish) fishy links to start your week with trout in the tabs.
Fly fishing tackle measurements make no sense
Decoding the antiquated systems we inhabit in fly fishing, and measuring things, so it all matches up real nice.
Winter Term registration opens Wednesday
Sign up for Winter Term class, come tie flies on Friday, read CFS in the Financial Times, and watch two Swedish brothers bust chops while contemplating the good life.
HOA Karens gatekeep eight-pound peacock bass
Don't let the park police keep you off your personal best. Fly fishing stoke from around the world in this week's newsletter
Carry a net, prevent ego AND fish death
It’s time to stop thinking about nets as a tool for playing offense. Nets protect fish, and ultimately protect your ego.
Portlanders! Come tie flies on Friday (or...just hang out?)
We're hosting two tying nights in November: This coming Friday, November 7th, and again on Friday, November 21st.
Tune in to our massive Craig Mathews Q&A
We hopped the Pheasant Tail Simplicity press tour train and had a chance to chat with one of its iconic co-authors, Craig Mathews, about a bevy of topics related to tying flies, the future of conservation, and much more.
Talking Pheasant Tail Simplicity with Craig Mathews
From tenkara-wielding biker gangs to roadkill feather ghouls to Yvon Chouinard's "stroke": A conversation with fly angling icon Craig Mathews never disappoints. Hear how Pheasant Tail Simplicity is creating a new generation of fly tiers, observation as the key to angling, and much, much more.
Tie your own flies: Six tips to start fly tying from Craig Mathews
Blue Ribbon Flies co-founder and co-author of Pheasant Tail Simplicity offers six tips for beginning fly tiers to get the ball rolling behind the vise.
Win a free copy of Pheasant Tail Simplicity
Announcing our Pheasant Tail fall giveaway, a member Q&A on tenkara and creative woodworking projects, tariffs bite the fly fishing industry, and a Leaders roundup of must-reads from around the fly fishing world
Which Orvis stores are closing?
A phone survey of Orvis' U.S. retail stores revealed which are due to close at the end of 2025 and which will remain open and refocus on fly fishing and wing-shooting.
CFS Member Projects: Q&A with Chuck Grimmett
On upstate New York streams, tying tenkara flies, fly fishing woodworking projects, functional design, and building your own fly fishing tools
Fall is for Pheasant Tail
We're going all-in on Patagonia's latest book, with a virtual book club meeting, fly-tying events in Portland, and a special surprise.
Swinging wet flies and soft hackles
Try out one of the most straightforward presentation styles, for both trout and steelhead
Free-floating through fall
Fly tying meetups, welcoming a new Intro alum group, and more
Thanks for the Member Drive support!
Our September Member Drive is complete, and we've got one lucky winner!
Big swell off Point No Point
Routines, purposelessness, wrist action, and our Member Drive fish reveal
Making your first fly rod casts: It's not all in the wrist
Whether you're an absolute beginner or recovering gear angler, wrist control is critical to learning to load and cast a fly rod properly.
What do the Grateful Dead and birdwatching have in common?
Probably just this week's newsletter? From private equity Dead deals to twitcher road meals.
Brand Dead: Is private equity ruining fly fishing gear?
A surefire sign your favorite outdoor brand is doing the old private equity shuffle? A Grateful Dead collaboration.
Two new Explorers stepped up. Will you be next? 🎯
We're rolling in our September Member Drive!
Go beyond the bobber
Challenging yourself to become a better angler, a book club rundown, and upcoming events.
Read By the River: Nature's Best Hope
Our river nerd book club turns to trees: backyard conservation, native plants, and creating habitat that supports the food web.
Announcing the CFS September Member Drive
Let's fund a Photarium—and find this mystery fish—for fly fishing education
Do you want the wire worm?
Knowing what you like, and sticking with it.
Back to school: Six Tips to Start fly fishing from George Daniel
One of the greatest educators in the angling world offers a roadmap to building your skills in the sport.
Let's hit the road
What if the secret to life's problems is just getting better at evading them?
Seeing salmon, seeing snakes, and tying simple flies
Facial recognition, but for fish, our first buzzworm of the year, and a new PCC fly-tying class for Fall Term
Salmon Vision: The AI revolution comes to salmon conservation
Bringing the power of artificial intelligence to bear on monitoring anadromous salmon populations for faster and more efficient counts, toward more resilient watersheds
How to make your kids hate fishing
Re-writing the old tired playbook of fishing as achievement and productive time in favor of something more curious and explorational.
Learn fly fishing: CFS' complete beginner's guide to getting started
Whether you're completely new to fly fishing or looking to improve your skills, this directory of all the main articles from Current Flow State has everything you need to learn about fly fishing, and be successful on the water.
CFSQ&A: What I Wish I'd Known Before My First Guided Float in Montana
Impressions, insights, and lessons-learned when an Intro to Fly Fishing alum takes her first guided float trip in Montana
Published Elsewhere
Profiling fly fishing educator George Daniel for PennStater magazine
From inspiration and ideas to executing a feature story, it takes a team, trust, and a little bit of good timing. Sounds like a successful fishing trip, too
Read by the River
Fix your yard, help a fish?
Join us for a discussion of backyard ecology in our Summer edition of the Read By the River book club.
Safety
Pain, pressure, and one hard pull: Hook removal done right
If you stick yourself rather than a fish, know how to get it out.
Salmon
Salmon without fish: Lab-grown seafood earns FDA approval, and a spot on the menu at Portland's Kann
With recently-granted FDA approval and a summer slot on the menu at Portland hotspot Kann, lab-grown salmon is in the spotlight. I talked with Justin Kolbeck, co-founder of cultivated seafood startup Wildtype.
Newsletter
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.
Fly fishing at the intersection
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.
TroutFest 2025
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.
Guides
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
Newsletter
Nirvana on the Deschutes: The salmonfly hatch with no hookups
Deciding to fish the salmonfly hatch on the Deschutes with hookless flies
Beginner questions
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!
Tools
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.
Practice
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.
Newsletter
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.
TroutFest 2025
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.
Read by the River
Read By the River: James C. Scott's In Praise of Floods
Saving dolphins, propitiating river spirits, and the future of history
Newsletter
Fish around and find out
Ten ways to make fly fishing a bigger part of your life
Connection
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.
Leaders
Hands off, or hands-free?
Yet sometimes you have to get a little dirt on your hands.
Gear
This season's most essential piece of fly-fishing gear
The dirt-cheap wonder-tool any angler can use to become legendary.
Newsletter
No drag, just drift
Striving to get even with the flow
Video
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
Conservation
Vivid indicators of life
Wading for caddis, fishing nymphs with suspenders
Newsletter
Fish on film
Roll cameras, because the Fly Fishing Film Tour came to town.
Writing
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.
Newsletter
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.
Newsletter
Stand up and tell 'em! 📣
A gentle nudge to find your voice in conservation and activism.
Newsletter
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.
Newsletter
Meanderings: Following the thalweg from the Willamette to the Seine
First flies, finding the thalweg, good eau in Paris, and some riparian art