Learn
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
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.
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.
Learn
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.
Mindset
Fish around and find out
Ten ways to make fly fishing a bigger part of your life
Tools
Hands off, or hands-free?
Yet sometimes you have to get a little dirt on your hands.
Technique
No drag, just drift
Striving to get even with the flow
Environment
Vivid indicators of life
Wading for caddis, fishing nymphs with suspenders
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
Conservation
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.
Environment
Meanderings: Following the thalweg from the Willamette to the Seine
First flies, finding the thalweg, good eau in Paris, and some riparian art
Tools
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.
Film
Immerse yourself with Kwintesencja
Take fifteen minutes, and be transported.
Learn
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.
Conservation
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.
Mindset
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
Events
Maupin Meetup 2025
Come one, come all, to the 2025 Current Flow State summer meetup at TroutFest in Maupin, Oregon!
Weekly Update
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.
Weekly Update
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.
Environment
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.
Weekly Update
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.
Environment
So long summer, come winter's hope.
If you start summer steelheading earlier than October, does it get less bittersweet?
Community
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.
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
Dispatches
Fly fishing in the Italian Alps Part 5: The Packing List
It's not the be-all end-all Ultimate Fly Fishing Destination Packing List, but it's what I wound up bringing to Italy, where the trout fishing is much like at home.
Weekly Update
Fly fishing in the Italian Alps, Part 4: Nude beaches and remote reaches
In Piemonte, on the Sesia and Mastallone rivers, anything is possible with the right attitude.
Weekly Update
Fly fishing in the Italian Alps, Part 3: Young marble giants
Searching for slabs on the Passer river in Südtirol / Trentino Alto-Adige, part of our five-part series on fly fishing in Italy
Weekly Update
Fly-Fishing in the Italian Alps, Part 2: Blowouts, high water, and mystery trout on the Swiss border
Can you help identify this strange trout variant? Salmo truta helvetica?
Weekly Update
Fly fishing in the Italian Alps, Part 1: Decoding access
The first in a series on fly fishing in the Italian alps, on getting licensed in Italy, and the main differences between fly fishing in Italy and the USA.