The Best Fly Fishing Is Everywhere: Stories in Celebration of Why We Fish

An exciting collection of essays, short stories and reflections on fly fishing.

In The Best Fly Fishing Is Everywhere, Jesse Lance Robbins invites readers into a contemplative journey through water and time. This collection of essays, stories, and meditations moves beyond the pursuit of the perfect cast or the biggest catch. Instead, it explores fly fishing as a dialogue between human and nature, solitude and connection, movement and stillness.

From the misty rivers of Oregon to the urban streams of Tokyo, the windswept flats of Key West to the trout-laced waters of New Zealand, Robbins captures the essence of place and the spirit of the angler. Each chapter is a moment suspended--sometimes triumphant, sometimes humbling, always honest.

Whether fishing alone or with companions, chasing trout or tarpon, Robbins reminds us that the best fishing isn’t found on a map. It’s found in the way we show up--in reverence, in curiosity, in love for the wild. Because the best fishing isn’t about where you go. It’s about what you find when you get there.

This is a book for those who fish, and for those who wonder why others do. It’s for anyone who has ever stood beside a river and felt something ancient stir. With prose that is both poetic and grounded, The Best Fly Fishing Is Everywhere is a meditation on nature, memory, and the quiet joy of being fully present.

Jesse Lance Robbins is a writer, conservationist, and angler living near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette Rivers in Springfield, Oregon. Born and raised in rural, Midcoast Maine, he grew up in a family of outdoors-lovers, with a river and a forest behind the house. Eventually moving west, he worked as a fly fishing guide, fly casting instructor, and for over a decade worked for Sage, Redington, RIO Products, and Fly Water Travel. Along the way, stories--read, heard, and told--have consumed and fueled him. Jesse’s writing aims to inspire inquiry of the relationships that arise while on the water and out of doors, and has been featured in The Drake Magazine, The Flyfish Journal, Swing the Fly, Modern Huntsman, TROUT, and Atlantic Salmon Journal, as well as online. Currently, Jesse is the Development Officer at WaterWatch of Oregon, a river conservation nonprofit; is the Producer at Writers on the Fly, an in-person fly fishing literary reading series; and is President of the Redsides Chapter of Trout Unlimited.