On the first official Travel Creel trip, a group of anglers gathered on the Oregon coast chasing winter steelhead. Travel Creel founder Joshua Schwartz had organized the trip around a simple idea: bring good people together around great fishing and even better food. A little rain can be perfect because it moves the fish around, wakes the river up, and gives everyone hope.
But that night the rain didn’t stop. By morning, the rivers were blown out, and the guides scrambled to find fishable water while the group spent the next few days chasing small windows of opportunity up and down the coast. They tried new stretches of river, moving from run to run, but very little came together.
That’s steelhead fishing. As Josh put it, “You’re either in the right place at the right time, or you’re not.”
Back at the house that evening, the group sat down for dinner. Josh had spent the afternoon cooking while everyone else was on the water, and as the plates started moving around the table, the room slowly loosened up. The frustration of the day began to fade as the conversation picked up.
Later that night, one of the guests pulled him aside. Josh assumed something was wrong. Maybe the guy was upset about the fishing, the tough conditions, or the plan for the next morning.
Instead, the man started tearing up.
The dinner reminded him of meals he used to share with his brother when they were kids. His brother had passed away years earlier, and something about the table, the conversation, and the food had brought that memory back. The man hugged him and thanked him for the experience.
“And that’s when it really hit me,” Josh said later. “He didn’t care that he didn’t catch a fish.”
That moment became the foundation for Travel Creel. Fishing will always be unpredictable. Weather shifts, conditions change, and fish don’t always cooperate. But the rest of the experience can still be intentional. Meals, hospitality, and the atmosphere of a trip are things you can control, and more often than not, those are the moments people remember.
From the Kitchen to the River
Josh didn’t grow up imagining he’d start a fly fishing travel company. Like a lot of anglers, he started simple. Spinning rods, small rivers back east, chasing bass, crappie, and whatever else would bite. Fly fishing came later, when a friend first handed him a fly rod on a small creek in Northern California, and everything changed. On the drive home, he stopped at a fly shop, bought his first rod, waders, and boots, and promptly overdrew his bank account.
“I didn’t care,” he said, laughing. “I was fired up.”
At the time, Josh was working in professional kitchens, the kind where the pace is relentless, and the standards are high. Over the years, he trained under some of the best chefs in California, building the instincts and discipline that come with that world. Eventually, he started guiding on the side, first taking friends out in his drift boat and helping them figure things out.
What he noticed quickly was how similar guiding and cooking actually felt. Both required patience, awareness, and constant problem-solving.
“Fly fishing every day is a puzzle,” he said. “You’re trying to figure out what the fish are doing, where they are, what they’re eating.”
Some days the puzzle is easy. The fish are there, and everything seems to line up. Other days it’s maddening, the kind of challenge that keeps anglers coming back because solving it feels so rewarding.
Guiding also revealed something most people never see. People imagine guides spending their days fishing, but the real work happens before and after the river. Boats need maintenance, gear needs organizing, and every day requires preparation long before the first cast. Those lessons followed Josh as he began shaping the concept that would eventually become Travel Creel.
People, Place, and the Table
Today, Travel Creel trips bring anglers together around the world, but the philosophy remains the same. The fishing is still the reason people show up, but the real experience happens around it. Meals become gathering points, stories unfold around the table, and strangers who meet on the first night often leave as friends already planning the next adventure together.
Spend any time around Josh, and it becomes obvious why the model works. He’s the kind of person who can walk into a room, a kitchen, or a boat ramp and start talking to anyone. Guides, chefs, clients, locals, it doesn’t matter. The energy is contagious, and people naturally gravitate toward it.
But those connections extend beyond the guests themselves. Wherever Travel Creel operates, Josh looks for ways to connect the experience to the place. That might mean sourcing ingredients from local farms, working with regional winemakers, or simply incorporating the food traditions that already exist in the community. Those stories often become part of the experience itself, giving guests a deeper connection to where they are. The meals follow that same approach, with Travel Creel chefs drawing on Michelin-starred backgrounds while building menus around the ingredients and traditions of the places they’re fishing.
Over time, those relationships grow. Lodge kitchens start experimenting with new ideas, local staff become part of the rhythm of the trips, and communities begin to anticipate the return of the group each season. It becomes less about visiting a place and more about becoming part of it.
Raising the Bar
What Josh cares about with Travel Creel isn’t flash or attention. It’s raising the standard for what a fishing trip can be.
“I’m not trying to be the next Gordon Ramsay,” he said. “That’s not who I am.”
What he cares about instead is impact. Raising the standard for what a fishing trip can be. Better food, better hospitality, and better experiences for the people who show up. He talks often about legacy, but not in the sense of recognition.
“I’d rather people say that guy did something good for the industry,” he said. “Even if they don’t remember my name.”
Travel Creel has grown steadily from the early circle of anglers Josh used to guide into a network of people traveling together to places like Oregon, the Bahamas, Mexico, and beyond. Behind the scenes, the operation runs through a tight-knit team that includes Josh’s wife, Samantha, and a tight group of collaborators who help keep the entire experience dialed. But the heart of it hasn’t changed.
“If we’re not having fun,” Josh said, “why are we doing it?”
That idea sits at the center of every trip. The lesson from that rainy steelhead week on the Oregon coast still holds true: The fishing draws people there. But the meals, the stories, and the people around the table are what make the trip stick.
