Greg Thomas

Author Greg Thomas visits Montana's Bighorn River and finds a wad of brown and rainbow trout on a three-day streamer eat. He also finds a bunch of dead waterfowl, spurring thoughts of covid and avian flu.

Author Greg Thomas joins steelhead guru Jeff Hickman on the Oregon Coast where they fish through a deluge and end up beacing three wild steelhead and debate the merits of hatchery versus native fish.

Whether searching for a gift, or just adding to your angling library Hogan’s A Passion For Steelhead is sort of a must-have, especially if you live and fish in the Pacific Northwest. Hogan lived the life, fished the rivers, caught the fish, and has a unique ability to teach, whether you’re standing next to him in the water, or simply taking an afternoon or evening to read his words. No matter how experienced you are with steelhead, this book will enhance your skills and give you an opportunity to keep dreaming.

House of Fly's Missouri River Trout Spey Camp offers an opportunity to learn all things trout spey from one of the Missouri River's absolute trout spey gurus, Mr. Fred Telleen. And, you just might put the biggest brown trout of your life in the bottom of the net.

Truth is, steelhead do take during the middle of the day, in bright sun, but you probably won’t raise one to the surface at that time. Instead, these fish find deep runs, slots, chutes, and plunge pools and hold close to bottom. You can also find summer steelhead holding in the shadows that ledge-rock provides . . . and you’ll find plenty of that shadowy ledge-rock on Idaho’s Clearwater River, Oregon’s Deschutes and North Umpqua rivers, and Washington’s Klickitat, among others.

Doomscrolling on social media can diminish our own experiences, but only if we allow it to. Take time, at least every once in a while, to consider how fortunate each of us has been in our angling careers.

A 9-foot 5-weight is the ideal western trout rod and I can’t disagree; it serves equally well for bass, yellow perch bluegill and crappie. I consider it to be the most versatile stick a fledgling western flyfisher could own.

If you’re planning to fish British Columbia’s southern interior anytime soon you’ll appreciate this piece of advice: get a bigger net.

The Chubby Chernobyl is synonymous with western stonefly hatches, especially the early season skwala emergence, which makes its annual appearance on numerous western rivers in March, April and May.

Basically, you have to want a permit to catch one, because not catching fish, as we all know (unless you fish with DuPont Specials, a.k.a. dynamite), is no fun at all. When you’re fishing permit, there’s a whole lot of waiting and very little catching. One eat a week would be acceptable. Three or four hookups means you’re pretty darn good at your craft.

Currently, fewer than a dozen outlets are licensed to sell his flies, one being—yours truly—House of Fly. If you buy Game Changers outside this network, Blane has a question for you: Are you pitchin’ real Chocklett? The answer: Probably not.

Whether they eat the dry or chow the nymph, trout run large during salmonfly time.