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.
Current Flowers of State:
We’ve crossed the witching hour in Oregon, with the close of general trout season west of the Cascades at dusk on October 31. Some of our favorite fisheries are now shut until next spring. But our great blessing of choice means we can now set our sights on other waters.
For me, steelhead tune-ups are necessary. With low water last weekend prior to our latest deluge I was stationed above the fish hatchery on the Sandy. It would have been nice to swing into a coho. But I needed to work out kinks from my two-handed cast.
I hope your fall has been fishy so far, and that you’ll send me some fish pics. I’ve gotten a few photos of behemoths on the Clearwater and John Day, so they’re sure out there.
Portlanders! Come hang on Friday
We’ll be hanging out this Friday night from 6-9pm in NE PDX, talking about and tying a few of the flies from Pheasant Tail Simplicity.
We’ll be hunkered down in a new board game bar on Fremont, The Paladin’s League. It's family-friendly and has a great atmosphere. We’ve got a big table reserved for our group, they serve great food and beverages. It'll be a great chance to talk fly tying. Or really just connect with other anglers.
What if I’ve never tied a fly before?
Then now is the time to tie your first. The flies in the book, several in particular, make great first flies. Come out, I’ll walk you through the easiest: A traditional soft hackle fly tied with pheasant tail.
It’s a versatile fly. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard spent an entire season only fishing this single fly in multiple sizes across a wide range of fishing scenarios, from Atlantic salmon and steelhead to bonefish to trout. It’s a fly that belongs in any box.
What if I’m puzzled by all the basic skills of fly tying?
Traditional soft hackle flies all use basic fly tying skills, nothing fancy. There are four or five skills core to tying flies we can practice on the PT soft hackle:
- Winding on the thread, and general thread control
- Tying in materials (wire, pheasant tail feather fibers, hackle feathers)
- Wrapping materials and dubbing
- Whip finishing to complete our flies
We’ll also talk about selecting the right hackle feathers from the partridge skin for the hook sizes we’re fishing, prepping the materials, and any other things that come up.
We'll work on them together and troubleshoot as we go. I guarantee if you can tie a clinch knot, you can learn to tie a fly.
I don’t have the book, or any tools or materials!
You don’t need either of those, either. This is truly a come-as-you-are scenario. I’ve accumulated an embarrassing amount of fly tying materials over the years. Sadly my prayers for those shoemaking / North Pole elves to come and fashion all the materials into finished flies while I sleep have gone unanswered. So we’ve got plenty to use. We’ll have at least three vises and sets of tools on hand for folks to take turns making turns.
What if I just want to hang out?
That’s cool too. It’ll be a great chance to chat all things fishing and connect with other anglers. Another great part about fly tying is you can chitchat while you do it. Expect plenty of fishing banter.
OK, I’m convinced. What next?
Please RVSP by hitting the button below. That’ll help me get a better idea of numbers, and let the venue know if we need an additional table.
I can’t make it Friday, but I still want to join!
If you can’t make it this Friday, we’re doing it two weeks later, on the 21st. Same bat time, same bat channel. Come out! It’ll be fun, and I’d love to see you and hear what’s new.
In case you missed it...
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.
Are you just getting started fly tying? Feeling a little intimidated? Give these Six Tips to Start from Craig a look, to get your confidence and approach squared away.
Leaders ➰
Mindset 🧘♂️
Birdwatching and fly fishing have a lot in common. And, typically birders make great anglers. They’re stealthy. The move with awareness. And they prioritize observation above all else. In Easy By Nature, Bill Davison talks about how the pursuit is “having a moment” and what the popularity of things like the Listers documentary might mean. Here’s an excerpt, emphasis mine. Replace birdwatching with fly fishing if you want to: “Here’s the truth: The reason birdwatching is stereotyped as ‘for old people‘ is because our culture is so dysfunctional it takes most people 50 years or more to figure out what makes for a meaningful life. The answer is genuine connection to other people and nature. Birds are how most people can get there fastest. Birdwatching is not a hobby for old people. It’s one of the most important things anyone can do at any age to improve the quality of their life.“ (link)
If that's the shot, here's the chaser, from Tommy Dixon, in an essay entitled "How to end your extremely online era": "Most of a good life is simply refusing to do what is bad." Turns out, several of the key components of fly fishing—going outside, making stuff, staring off into space—are key to reclaiming your attention and precious moments on earth. (link)
Environment ⛰️
The Native Fish Society is going to be focusing on the North Umpqua in a series of monthly articles. It's a gem of a river that I'm eager to get more acquainted with. (link)
Also via the NFS, if you catch a walleye in the upper Willamette, do not even think of throwing it back. Eat that delicious fish. They’re more voracious than pikeminnow in chowing down on juvenile steelhead and salmon. (link)
The New Zealand government is forecasting an epic Beech Mast for the summer and fall of 2026, the biggest in seven years. The Beech Mast "hatch" is an overpowering production of nuts from Beech trees that in turn causes rodent populations to explode and already-stressed native bird populations to be come imperiled. (link)
More important to us anglers is trout begin to target rodents in a big way during these emergences. And brown trout grow to massive sizes on a steady diet of mice. Read Boris at Kehu Angling's recap of the 2015 season, another big Beech Mast year, if you want to spend more time in an expensive fantasy of double-digit (that's double-digit weight in pounds) fish. (link)
Tools 🎣
Due West Anglers ponders the phrase "Guide not God," and what we gain (and miss out on) by outsourcing some of the thinking involved in fishing. (link)
Technique 🤺
When you’re done tying soft hackles, Kubie Brown at Midcurrent continues to deliver the primers, this one on how to fish them. (link)
🎥 Something to watch this week is Loop Tackle's latest in its "Wild Fish, Wild Places" series. Episode 3 lands angler Emilie Björkman in Iceland, where she takes in the majestic scenery and fishes small flies for big fish. The episode also looks at the impact farmed salmon have on the island's native population. (link)
Meanwhile, in The Drake's latest issue, EIC Tom Bie reminds readers James Cox Kennedy, chairman emeritus of Cox Enterprises, Inc., which acquired the aforementioned Loop Tackle last year, was a staunch opponent of public access in his long-running conflict with anglers on Montana's Ruby River. (link)
Conservation 🌲
As you've likely heard (and boy is it positive that this sort of news spreads) the first spawning chinook have made their way above the former dam site on the Klamath. The New York Times and Oregon Public Broadcasting have now weighed in. The OPB article focuses on water temps, which seem promising. "The water below the former Iron Gate Dam site in California is dropping to around 60 degrees Fahrenheit about a month earlier than it did when the dams were in place." With ongoing drought in the upper Klamath basin, and the earth only getting hotter, good temps in the first few years of this mega-scale habitat restoration effort will be critical. (NYT link, OPB link)
Turns out striped bass are hardier than fish biologists and bureaucrats expected. The Saltwater Guides Association writes about a revised study of mortality rate among caught-and-released stripers pegs the number of fish that die after being caught and released at 4%. That's an improvement from the previous 9% and a useful tool in managing fishing quotas. It's also a good reminder even the most stringent C&R practices can't eliminate the chance of harming fish. (link)
If you're enrolled in Pacific Power's Blue Sky Rewards program, here's a 15-year impact statement. The report is put together by its on-the-ground partners—and my friends and former colleagues—at The Freshwater Trust. (link)
Community 🏘️
Over at the Atlantic Tyler Austin Harper writes a fantastic profile of Tom McGuane. The last literary fly fishing icon standing has recently published his latest collection of short stories. At 85, McGuane is still a bright light, in a world that seems intent on eradicating what he’s so vividly illuminated. (link)
Missoula’s The Pulp investigates the phenomenon of fish pics in dating app profiles. They interview several local date-seeking-gals and academics about the effect. It's a fun topic. I would have liked to have heard from any women who featured fish pics in their profiles. You know, uh, for a friend. No, I'm just joking. I'd rather have heard from any species-ist takes. (“Eww, is that a carp?”) (link)
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That's it for this week! Current Flow State is a weekly newsletter from me, Nick Parish.
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