Chad St. John - Owner/Guide

My love for fishing began in the Eastern Sierra on family camping trips and while visiting my great grandparents that lived in Big Pine.  I spent countless days fishing the Owens, Big Pine Creek, the Mammoth Lakes Basin, Rock Creek, June Lake Loop and Rush Creek. Some of my favorite childhood memories were spent getting lost along those creeks on family camping trips, finding secret holes, wandering more, and of course catching fish. Through my early teens I was typically fishing salmon eggs, bits of worms, lures, and fly and bubble.  Flash forward to 21, I rented a fly rod to try to teach myself how to fly fish. It didn't work out so well. I tried again at 23, same outcome. Then,  in 2010, I moved to Mammoth Lakes. Soon after, a staff member at a local fly shop took me out to the parking lot and taught me to cast a fly rod. Six months later I got a job at that fly shop,  and learned from the staff and shop guides. The  following year I started guiding spin fishing trips, and three years after that I started taking fly fishing trips.  I would end up guiding for that shop for a total of 12 years. To say that fly fishing has consumed my life since that day in the parking lot would be an understatement;  it has been the center of my life, and everything else fits around it. 

In 2020 I guided at an incredible lodge in Patagonia and also moved from Mammoth to Redding to take a teaching job. I started Sierra Trout Fishing that same year, taking trips in Northern California during the the school year and in Mammoth in the summer. In 2023 I started another guide service (same name) in Mammoth. In 2024 I was approved to teach a fly fishing class at the school I work for, and that brings me to where I am today; during the school year,  I teach fly fishing to high school students and also guide on weekends and holidays in Northern California,  and guide in the Mammoth area all summer long seven days a week, then on weekends into early fall.

I am a  Clearwater Certified Guide and a California State credentialed teacher who has guided all different types of people with different skill levels ranging from beginner to advanced. I am a professional guide- licensed, bonded, insured, permitted- who seeks results while maintaining levity with my clients. I love adventure, fishing new water, the thrill of hooking fish in challenging situations, and of course sharing my love/passion/obsession of fly fishing with others.