Fly fishing,
open to everyone.
Our mission is to make fly fishing more affordable and accessible for everyone, with one tool built around the fly fishing community: education, a network of anglers, and the most reputable map data on the market.
Focused on what matters most: fly fishing.
As fly anglers, we are always looking for the next fish around the bend. Maps only get you so far; a network of anglers is worth even more. That is why we built the first mobile app dedicated to the fly fishing community, so you can connect with nearby anglers and pro guides, take more trips, and catch more fish.
Alongside the map you get a community to plan trips with, pro guides, shops, and businesses on one platform to message and learn from, and over 100 species mapped to specific rivers and streams, so you can plan every trip around the fish you are chasing. Thousands of hours of sourcing, research, and curation go into the map, so you spend more time fishing and less time researching.
Protecting fisheries starts with falling in love with fly fishing.
Conservation is king. When anglers know and use the public waters around them, awareness follows, and this sport and its traditions get passed on to the next generation.
As a community, we want to be good stewards of the wild places we fish: we teach practices like proper fish handling, and we give back financially to organizations making a difference.
Built by an angler who learned the hard way.
Building a platform like FlyFishFinder takes a vision, years of hard work, and, sadly, a bit less fly fishing. That gave us the perspective to build the best digital tool for fly anglers.
The backstory
As a newer fly angler, without a father, grandfather, or close friend to teach me the ropes, I was left to my own devices. I struggled to pick the right flies, could not read the water, had no clue how to throw a streamer, and stuck to the classic overhand cast, with plenty of tree tangles mixed in.
I taught myself from YouTube, but applying it on the water was another story, and I wanted to meet local anglers in real life. Finding them was hard; a few Facebook groups did little for my network. A few years later I had the idea for a platform that made it easy to connect with other anglers while helping you level up. I jumped in head first, and very naively: I had no development or software background and taught myself along the way.
The challenge
As I finally met a few anglers in my neck of the woods, it turned out we all shared the same pain points:
- We kept ending up at the same couple of spots.
- We were likely catching the same fish over and over.
- Getting better on the water was hard from online tutorials alone.
There had to be a better way.
Building it
The real work began in March 2019, when I bought flyfishfinder.com and built a simple website where anglers could make profiles and message each other. That alone took nearly a year, because I refused to outsource it: I wanted to understand every part of the platform and steer its direction.
Early users followed, and in 2020 we began building a proper web application. By user request we added custom maps, which, spoiler, has taken the most time: researching, acquiring, cleaning, and standardizing the data into one unified map has taken nearly 5,000 hours on its own.
There have been plenty of hard days, and days I wanted to give up. It has gone slower than I wanted at times, but exactly the way it was meant to go. We are growing the team and will keep working to advance the platform for fly fishing.
"I am always happy to chat with fellow anglers and entrepreneurs about what it takes to bring your own ideas to life."
andrew@flyfishfinder.com
Get the most from your limited time on the water.
As fly anglers ourselves, we built FlyFishFinder around the problems we kept running into: detailed maps and filters plus a dedicated angler community, so you can explore new water while saving time and money.
225,000 rivers are mapped across all 50 states, including 55,000 trout streams, with 25+ map filters, unlimited private saves, and the guides, shops, campsites, and trailheads around the water. We have put nearly 8,000 hours into research and development with top anglers. We are not social media or Fishbrain; we are built for fly anglers. Free and Premium plans are both available.
Are you a professional fly fishing guide?
Get featured on our maps and in the app. Get in front of a big audience of fly anglers and keep building your reputation.
