No drag, just drift

Striving to get even with the flow

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

Vivid indicators of life

Wading for caddis, fishing nymphs with suspenders

Fish on film

Roll cameras, because the Fly Fishing Film Tour came to town.

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.

Rolling your own

If you wish to make a fly rod from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

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

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.

Stand up and tell 'em! 📣

A gentle nudge to find your voice in conservation and activism.

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.

Meanderings: Following the thalweg from the Willamette to the Seine

First flies, finding the thalweg, good eau in Paris, and some riparian art

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.

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From reel seat to tippet: understanding the anatomy of a fly-fishing rig

The knee bone connects to the thigh bone...the thigh bone connects to the hip bone...digging into all the things that attach to your fly rod, from reel seat to fly line to tippet.

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How to buy your first fly rod

There's one mistake I want to help you avoid when you buy your first fly rod.

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The ultimate guide to fly-fishing knots

The do's and do-knot's fly-fishing knot tying. Find out what you need to know, what you don't, and how to build your skills and have confidence in your fly-fishing knots

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Scouting 101: Keys to finding great fly fishing spots

Scouting fly fishing spots can be a major challenge for beginners. It depends on combing through lots of sources of information to find places where you might find great water, then verifying those hunches in real life.

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Finding your Home Waters with the Big Here Quiz

Start your journey to find your home waters by grounding yourself on your home planet.

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Setting your fly-fishing intentions: The CFS Check-in

Check-in with your goals and intentions at the start of every fishing season, or calendar year.

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Fly-fishing gear: What's essential, what's optional?

Here are the four pieces of gear you really need to get started fly-fishing

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What is fly fishing? Why do we fish? A very short introduction

For as long as humans have lived near rivers and oceans, we’ve fished. And I’d argue that fly fishing is the closest to how our ancestors did it.

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My life story as told by water

Who I am, and how that's shaped my fishing life

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Five reasons to start fly fishing

Nobody fly fishes because it’s easy. So why do they do it? Here are five reasons why I fly fish, along with two anti-reasons.

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Streamers and triggering trout aggression

Here are two examples of videos depicting the most visible and dramatic types of eats you'll ever get: territorial brown trout going after streamers.

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Public access and the ethics of fishing trespass

If a trespass happens in the backcountry and leaves no trace, does it make a mark?