Our third day in Patagonia found us fly fishing the Nirehuao River with Coyhaique River Lodge. Today was a float trip down the river, casting dries, switching to streamers, and back to dries in the afternoon. It was the longest “windshield time” of the week…two hours to the turnoff and then another 45 minutes to…

Our first week in Patagonia found us fly fishing with Coyhaique River Lodge. We met brothers Claudio and Gaston Urrejola on our first trip to Patagonia in 2007. It was a much smaller operation in those days as the brothers alternated guiding us on the rivers and lakes around Coyhaique. The lodge was built a…

I completed tying all the flies we’ll be using in Chile. We leave in a couple of days and thought you’d enjoy the list of flies I’m taking to Patagonia. First of all, let me say all these flies is probably overkill, but hey, I’m a fly tyer! Lodges differ on whether they provide all…

This is my final post for the year and I’d like to share some of my favorite memories from 2024 on RiverKeeper Flies. The image above is from the Kaldakvisl River in Iceland. We took a photography tour in May, coinciding with the bird migration and ended our trip with a couple days fly fishing for…

Happy holidays to my fly fishing and fly tying friends! My wish for you in the new year is to be healthy and chase as many fish as possible. Enjoy…go fish!

I’ve been at the vise, filling customer fly orders and our Patagonia fly boxes. I thought I’d share the diversity of flies I’ve tied in the last couple of weeks. Believe it or not, these are called Despair Nymphs and were created in the 1930’s. I tied a dozen for one of my customers, four…

I was on the river a few weeks ago, sitting on a log waiting for fish to rise and begin feeding on mayflies floating downstream. I pulled out my PMD fly box to select either an Improved Sparkle Dun, RiverKeeper Soft Hackle Cripple, or a Parachute variant I tied recently. It got me to asking…

The 2024 Casting for Recovery online auction will be held November 7 thru 17. Proceeds from the auction benefit Casting for Recovery (CfR). There are several items directly benefiting the Southern Oregon CfR retreat my wife runs which I’ve shared below. Custom tied flies by RiverKeeper Flies and Montana Fly Company Poly Fly Box –…

And just like that, the seasons change on the Metolius River. We had our first snow on Halloween. It’s like someone throw’s a switch on November 1 and the weather and hatches change. To be fair, the weather has changed, but there continue to be insects hatching with fish looking to eat them. It’s only…

I have a friend who reached out a few weeks ago with an interesting question. He was planning to have his knee replaced and was hoping to use some of the recovery time to organize his flies. The problem…how to identify the flies. I don’t know if you are familiar with Google Lens, but in…