Weekly Update
Pain, pressure, and one hard pull: Hook removal done right
If you stick yourself rather than a fish, know how to get it out.
Weekly Update
Current Flow State's Monday morning newsletter features fly fishing tips, stories, and koans as well as industry, environmental conservation news, and more. Feed your fly fishing obsession with the mindful side of angling.
Weekly Update
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.
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.
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.
Meditations
Fish around and find out
Ten ways to make fly fishing a bigger part of your life
How To
Hands off, or hands-free?
Yet sometimes you have to get a little dirt on your hands.
Meditations
No drag, just drift
Striving to get even with the flow
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.
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
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.
Meditations
A tale for the turn of the year
Wish 2025 an angler's welcome with some intention setting, saying goodbye to Jimmy Carter, summer meetup dates, and the anatomy of a fly-fishing rig
CFS News
Maupin Meetup 2025
Come one, come all, to the 2025 Current Flow State summer meetup at TroutFest in Maupin, Oregon!
Books
Read By the River, 2024
Sometimes, literally. The five favorite (mostly) fly-fishing books I read this year
Weekly Update
From runway to river
Fly fishing fashion icons, Joe Pera, final slots for winter classes, and more.
Weekly Update
Finding your fly lab
Another critical element in establishing your home waters: having a place to test things out. Plus a new book from Robin Wall Kimmerer and the many (gnarly) faces of lamprey.
How To
Avoid this one mistake when buying your first fly rod
How's that for a clickbait title? CFS' first-fly-rod buyers' guide, Winter classes open now, and a push against crude fly names.
Dispatches
Ground yourself on our home planet
Establish The Big Here on the way to finding your home waters. Also, two fun fly fishing films, and registration opening for Winter term class.
Meditations
A time to mend
If you can manage your line, you can manage your life.
Weekly Update
Some lines on knots
When it comes to fly-fishing knot tying skill, it's truly a tale of the haves and the have-knots. OK, ok. I promise not to get things too twisted up here, pun-wise at least.
Weekly Update
So long summer, come winter's hope.
If you start summer steelheading earlier than October, does it get less bittersweet?
How To
Invest in your angling, and your community: Join a fly fishing club
There's a great new documentary out about the wonderful benefits of joining a club. Guess what? Joining a fly-fishing club is even better, and will make you a better angler.