Books
My favorite fly fishing books of 2025, and ten other standout reads
Looking for your next great read? Here are a few recommendations, fly fishing-related and non-, as well as a few opinions on what makes good writing.
Books
Fly-fishing literature, reading recommendations, and books that capture the spirit of angling. Stories and wisdom from writers who understand the water.
Weekly Update
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
Weekly Update
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.
Weekly Update
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.
Conversation
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.
Learn
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.
Weekly Update
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
Books
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.
Books
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.
Books
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.
Technique
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.
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.
Books
Read By the River: James C. Scott's In Praise of Floods
Saving dolphins, propitiating river spirits, and the future of history
Film
Fish on film
Roll cameras, because the Fly Fishing Film Tour came to town.
Learn
Rolling your own
If you wish to make a fly rod from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Learn
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.
Books
Remembering Jimmy Carter, our greatest fly fishing president
Many presidents have fished, but few had the soul of an angler.
Weekly Update
Read By the River, 2024
Sometimes, literally. The five favorite (mostly) fly-fishing books I read this year
Weekly Update
Remembering John Gierach
Recalling the shaper of a Platonic fly-fishing reality, in his own words
Weekly Update
High-torque and low-torque activities
Digging in on the progression from Aspen Extreme to Trout Bum (RIP John Gierach), Grant Petersen CFS GOAT, SalmonSuperHwy lauded by the White House, and more
Mindset
What we give up fly fishing
On Adam Phillips, and finding, and re-finding our identities as anglers
Learn
Fly fishing and problem solving
Moving beyond the engineering mindset, and trying to embrace frustration as a key function of learning
Books
The best fly fishing books ever written
Books that will improve your fly fishing. A definitive list of the best fly fishing books, from beginner guides to technical methods, from entomology to romantic lore and conservation. And, of course, great writing.
Books
Icons: Percival Everett
On trout fishing and the truth: "For all the aggravation a trout can cause, it cannot think and does not consider you. A trout is very much like truth; it does what it wants, what it has to."
Books
Stepping inside the Angler's Club of New York
If you get a chance to visit the Angler's Club in New York City, take it. It's the nucleus of the sport's North American origins.
Books
Icons: William James Lunn, River Keeper of the Test
Lunn's extensive restoration and reclamation work on the Test is a must-read for anyone interested in the practice of taking care of a river.
Books
CFS Chat: George Daniel on Dynamic Nymphing
We were lucky enough to get some time with George (in between the Green Drake blitz, even!) and had the chance to ask him a few questions about his approach to the book.
Weekly Update
Congrats Piscator: Happy Birthday Izaak Walton
Happy 418th birthday to Izaak Walton, the first (and Compleat-est) angling blogger. Give his masterpiece a leaf through if you haven't before—there are some great carp recipes in there.