Great stories begin withquestionable decisions.
It’s about the story. The rod is just how you get there.
The math wasn’t mathing.
A few years back I took a trip to the headwaters of the Amazon River with three of my best friends. We spent seven days in the jungle with record low-water levels, intense heat and killer spiders. The fishing was insanely technical and I blew more shots than I'd like to admit. Sore muscles, sun-fried skin, jungle-rotted feet. Still the best week of fishing I've ever had.
We've told stories from that trip a hundred times. The rods we were using have never come up... not once. Nobody asks what we were casting. They ask about the fishing, the wildlife and the sketchy landing strip. They want to know whether the stories about the Tsimané tribe are true, or if we ever saw a jaguar (we didn't). The rod is a tool. It just has to work.
That's the part that stuck with me. The rod in my hand that week cost a thousand dollars and it was great — it did exactly what a rod is supposed to do. Nothing more, nothing less. I got home thinking a rod that good shouldn't cost that much.
So I found people who know more about rods than I do and we made one. $450. High-modulus aerospace carbon, proprietary weave, stainless guides, blacked-out blanks. Anodized reel seats in colors that would have fly shop owners questioning our sanity. And no cork. Nobody could tell me why it had to be. Our grip is a polyurethane blend that doesn't get slimy and definitely doesn't look bland.
We're not the biggest name in the sport. We're not the cheapest either — there's a rack for that at every big box store, and you already know how those cast.
A thousand-dollar rod makes you careful.Careful doesn’t make stories.
Break it. We’ll fix it. No interrogation, no lecture.
Nobody’s best day on the water came down to the rod.
Every good story I've got started with a bad decision. The line into the canyon we probably shouldn't have taken. Staying out in weather that sent everybody else home hours earlier. Tying on a fly nobody fishes, on water nobody walks to, at an hour that made no sense.
None of it looked smart at the time. Some of it still doesn't.
Here's a weird thing for a rod company to say: the rod isn't the point. It never was. A good rod just gets out of the way. You shouldn't be thinking about it at all — especially not in the last ten minutes of light, when you finally get the shot you've been waiting for all day.
That's the rod we built. Take it into the canyon. It's covered for life, no questions asked.
Four things we’re stubborn about
A rod is a tool, and tools are allowed to look cool
Those aren’t competing goals. Everyone acts like they are.
If a price needs a story to justify it, it’s the wrong price.
Ours needs one sentence: this is what it costs to make.
A warranty should be embarrassing to us, not to you.
You shouldn’t have to invent a version where it wasn’t your fault. It was probably your fault. That’s sort of the idea.
The fish don’t care what you paid.
Neither do we. But you might, in about six months, when you’re looking at the statement.
Go make a questionable decision.We’ll cover the rod.