Rainland Fly Casters
Conserving, Restoring, and Educating through Fly Fishing
Club Board
The Rainland Fly Casters board meets at 7pm on the 1st Thursday of each month at El Compadre restaurant in Warrenton, Oregon (119 S. Main Street) to plan out club activities and future programs for the monthly meeting.
President - Cameron Pierce
After an early career as a writer and editor, Cameron left publishing to pursue a passion for craft beer. He is now the Distribution Sales Manager at Fort George in Astoria, Oregon, overseeing a portfolio of national, regional, and local craft beer, wine, and cider. A constant learner and occasional instructor, Cameron was the Mellon Scholar-in-Residence at Rhodes University in South Africa in 2015. From 2021-2022, he served as an instructor for Portland State University’s Center for Executive and Professional Education in the Business of Craft Brewing Program. He is a Certified Cicerone® and has also completed the Wine & Spirit Education Trust Level 2 Award in Wines. Beyond beer, he has a love for angling. His work has been featured in numerous publications, including Gray’s Sporting Journal and Flyfishing & Tying Journal. His latest book is the anthology Taut Lines: Extraordinary True Fishing Stories, published by Little, Brown UK. Cameron recently joined the Rainland Fly Casters club.
Vice President - Derek Wiley
Derek is a Fish Habitat Restoration Biologist with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and board member of the Tillamook Bay Watershed Council. Since moving to the PNW from Maryland in 2004, Derek has spent countless hours with fly rod in hand chasing salmon and steelhead in the coastal bays and rivers, rockfish and lingcod in the salt, trout in the Cascade lakes in Central Oregon, and even carp in the Columbia River. During work Derek can be found coordinating with local watershed councils, landowners, private timber companies, and state agencies to plan and implement stream habitat restoration projects to benefit salmon and steelhead on the northern Oregon Coast and lower Columbia River. Derek also enjoys photography, videography, and weightlifting. For more information about Derek, check out his website at derekwileymedia.com. Derek lives in Bay City, OR with his wife Kelly and three cats.
Treasurer - Tom Flanagan
Tom was born and raised in Southern California and enjoyed skiing and hiking prior to relocating to Oregon after completing his education. He worked for 39 years as a Respiratory Therapist in Astoria before retiring in 2018. Tom's current hobbies include waterfowl hunting, rifle hunting deer, bowhunting elk, mushroom hunting, and fishing. Tom started fly fishing in the early 1980's, but not in earnest until about 1987 after his first trip to the Lower Deschutes River. His favorite species to target are bass, trout, and steelhead. Although Tom doesn't catch many steelhead, he does enjoy the challenge and just being out on the river.
Tom has volunteered on the North Coast Chapter of Ducks Unlimited for over ten years, most recently as the chapter's Treasurer and joined the Rainland Fly Casters club in 2019. He lives in Astoria with his wife of 43 years, Marilyn, two black labs (mother and son), and his cat.
Secretary - Jackson Hughston
Jackson was raised in north Salt Lake, Utah and grew up with a passion for the outdoors and natural world. He enjoyed teaching ski lessons, racing mountain bikes, camping and fishing. Jackson moved to Montana after high school to study music education at Montana State University in Bozeman. He guided raft trips on the Yellowstone River for several summers and had many adventures exploring Montana while in school. He also worked his first season as a fishing guide in Yellowstone National Park.
Jackson now lives in Astoria, Oregon working as a music teacher. He is excited about the local fishing opportunities for sea-run coastal cutthroat trout, salmon and steelhead and is looking forward to spending more time learning about and pursuing these species in our beautiful area.
1-Year Director - Henry Hoffman
Henry was born in California in 1934. In 1955 he started raising roosters for fly tying feathers and began commercial fly tying. After serving time in the Army, Henry moved to Oregon in 1961 and by 1965 he began developing high quality dry fly hackle for fly tiers. In 1989 Henry and his wife Joyce decided to sell their business, Hoffman's Hackle Farm, and shipped 23,000 fertile eggs to Dr. Thomas Whiting. Since selling the business, Henry has had time to get back to his first love, fly fishing & fly tying. Additionally, he now enjoys framing flies and donating fly plates for fund raising events.
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Henry's fly patterns have been shown in many publications and were featured latest in the book " The Honest Flies of Henry Hoffman" written by Jay Nicholas. Henry is a charter member of the Rainland Fly Casters club and began attending meetings in 1981.
Gillie - Vacant
Programs - Matt Beechan
Matt is a maker, angler and small business owner on Oregon’s North Coast. Growing up in a small town hardware store, Matt has been a maker from an early age. Seeing plumbing parts and lumber scraps as modular building blocks to make interesting contraptions, he was always looking for problems to solve. That pursuit has continued, with woodworking, 3D printing and digital fabrication replacing the hardware store parts he grew up with. This has also been a theme in his professional life, applying problem solving skills to digital banking and public transit technology.
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Matt grew up camping and fishing the lakes and streams in California’s Eastern Sierras. He recently dove headfirst into fly fishing and is thoroughly enjoying the challenges that come with learning a new craft. He has also developed a strong passion for tying flies and learning about the history of materials and methods used.
Website/Newsletter - Derek Wiley
To provide more appeal and excitement for current and prospective members of the Rainland Fly Casters club, Derek proposed upgrading the club newsletter and creating a new club website in summer, 2022. The board agreed this was a necessary action to rejuvenate waning excitement in the club from current members and to better attract future members. The goals of both the updated newsletter and this website are to provide more visually appealing and exciting fly fishing content to members and better sources of information for up-to-date news and activities within the Rainland Fly Casters club. Derek will continue to update and improve this website based on member feedback, so comments and suggestions are welcome.