I’m writing today’s post from Maui. We’ve been here for over a week now and experienced the second Kona low of intense rain. Lahaina, which is only a few miles away, received over 6 inches of rain in 24 hours! The islands were severely impacted, but we were safe from our second story condo enjoying…
I bet you missed it. I celebrated another milestone a couple of weeks ago. RiverKeeper Flies turned 12 years old on March 5! That’s right, I’ve been at the keyboard writing these posts for 12 years. It’s hard for me to believe where my journey has taken me. Before I go too far, I wanted to…
This is a post Steve Haigh from The Destination Angler published on 3/2/2026 to summarize the episode we recorded with him titled Dry Fly Nomads Across the American West | John & Karen Kreft. I shared links to his YouTube channel and podcast earlier, but if you didn’t have time to watch or listen, here…
I’m headed to Albany, OR for the 2026 Fly Tyer & Fly Fishing Expo on March 13 & 14. I found out late last year my RiverKeeper Soft Hackle Cripple had been selected for the show fly. I’m proud of that, but also acknowledge the fly is a variant of some sort I’ve tweaked a…
In my last post, I mentioned we were evacuated from Valle del Carrileufu Lodge after only 6 hours because of a large wildfire very close to the lodge. Our initial plan was to stay at the lodge for four nights and fish around an in Los Alerces National Park. That night we began what I…
Karen and I were honored to spend some time with Steve Haigh recently. We discussed our fly fishing road trips on his Destination Angler podcast he published today. In addition, I talked about fly tying and flies we rely upon. The YouTube link on the left below is the podcast with video. On the right…
I wanted to share that I will be making a BEAST Fleye Zoom presentation this coming Friday night, February 27, 2026 at 5 pm Pacific time. The presentation is for Gretchen and Al Beatty’s BT’s Fly Tying Friday class they’ve been leading for the past several years during the winter and spring months. If you…
We returned recently from another wonderful Patagonia trip, beginning with SET Fly Fishing and ending the trip fishing with El Encuentro Fly Fishing in Argentina. I’ll share our experience at the three lodges they offer. If you check the El Encuentro website, they offer 3 different programs: We’ve been fortunate to fly fish in Argentina…
It shouldn’t come as a surprise if you’ve followed RiverKeeper Flies for some time that I like to fish dry flies. I can tie many fly patterns, but I always come back to what I describe as simple, but effective flies. That phrase seems to be my mantra and those types of flies are generally…
We returned to Rakin Lodge with SET Fly Fishing in 2026 to fish for ten days. This year, they’ve incorporated fly fishing three days on the Rio Trocoman into their program. It’s a river we’ve fished the past three years (I’ll link those posts at the bottom of this page) and we were hoping to…
