Jeff Perin (Sisters) is a fly fishing guide in Deschutes County and on destination trips around the world. Learning from his grandparents, Perin’s uncle introduced him to fly fishing, and he honed his skills as a teenager while working at a fly shop in the Bend area. Today, Perin’s Fly Fishers Place shop in Sisters is a crucial source of knowledge and camaraderie for area fly fishers.
Bio
Jeff Perin guides fly-fishing trips all over the world, but his favorite places to bring fishers are the Central Oregon waters he calls home. Within an hour’s drive of the fly shop he operates in downtown Sisters, the waterways are a fly fisher’s delight. The Deschutes, Metolius, Crooked, Fall, McKenzie, and Santiam are prime trout streams, and among them lie hundreds of fishable lakes. Perin got his start on East Lake, and it’s still his favorite spot. “I have one of seven U.S. Forest Service permits to be a guide at East Lake,” he notes with pride. “So I’m a licensed guide at a place where I learned to fish with my grandparents 44 years ago.” Since childhood, Perin has immersed himself in fly-fishing and fly-fishing books. He is steeped in the regional cultural traditions that accompany this recreational and professional pursuit. Perin possesses and disseminates a wealth of knowledge that is unique to the Central Oregon fly-fishing community. The daily fishing report—written on a dry erase board on the porch—offers some insight into this specialized culture. “It’s gonna look like a foreign language if you have no idea what we’re talking about in the first place!” Perin laughs. “I think people drink a lot of whiskey in the middle of the night and then tie flies and name flies weird names.” At the core of Perin’s work is teaching the specialized art of “matching the hatch”—choosing the fly that best emulates what’s on the river.
