St. Croix’s return to fly: 4 years on | Hatch Magazine

In the spring of 2022, one of fly fishing’s oldest friends returned to the fold when Wisconsin-based St. Croix turned up as a major exhibitor at the American Fly Fishing Trade Association gathering in Salt Lake City. That may sound a bit dramatic, but more than a decade earlier, the company’s leadership made a conscious decision to lean into what it did best. St. Croix has always been a fishing rod company, and, while fly rods are certainly fishing rods, the company’s strengths sprang from its Midwestern roots, where bass rods, baitcasters and spinning rods were more in tune with the fish that swim in the waters around Park Falls, Wisconsin, and the anglers that put in the time chasing them.

The wisdom was simple: why devote an outsized portion of the company’s time and energy to fly fishing, which, even today, is but a small slice of St. Croix’s overall market? So what, then, was St. Croix doing at a fly fishing dealer show in Salt Lake City as the world emerged from a pandemic and the only thing business forecasters in the fly space could be certain of was … uncertainty?

“We have a right to be here,” St. Croix’s VP of marketing, Jesse Simpkins, told me at the time. “Our history allows for that.”

Those few days in Salt Lake signaled St. Croix’s overt return to the fly space, and, at the time, it came armed with what any reputable legacy rod-maker would: refreshed versions of its well-known “legacy” fly rods that, for years, put St. Croix firmly in the discussion when it came to long rods anglers could both afford and appreciate. Better yet, the rumor mill started circulating. Word at the time had it that St. Croix would, in the near future, launch a premium fly rod to compete with the flagship sticks other high-end manufacturers were crafting and retailing north of $1,000. But let’s not get ahead of the story.

Simpkins was right. St. Croix had some caché — the company can date its roots back to its founding in 1948. There’s no disputing its history and its influence within the fishing industry, even if that curated fly-fishing clout spent the better part of the 2010s gathering a bit of dust as other fly-rod manufacturers charged full steam ahead into the now-confounding realm of high-tech fly rods that bear four-figure price tags. And a dealer show? What better place to reintroduce a legacy brand to fly shops and retailers who might be looking for answers in a post-COVID climate where fly fishing participation climaxed in 2020 and then nosedived in 2021?

And, perhaps, Simpkins had a crystal ball. In 2020, when much of the world was sequestered from itself due to the pandemic, anglers who fly fished rose from 2 percent of the overall angling community to 3 percent — that may not seem like a big increase, but it was up almost a million anglers from 2019. In 2021, those million anglers faded into the ether, and the percentage of anglers who fly fished returned to its pre-COVID state, where it remained for two years. But, in 2023 and 2024, fly fishing participation ballooned again to 3 percent of all anglers. And, in 2024, the number of anglers in America hit 57.9 million, up from 54.7 the year of COVID. That means that, in 2024, there were more than 8 million fly fishers in the United States alone.

In other words, now is a good time to be courting dealers who sell gear to a growing fly-fishing market. And, since St. Croix restaked its claim in the fly space four years ago, it’s been laser-focused on building its dealer stable and putting rods where anglers can once again give them a wiggle in person.

How’s the re-entry going?

“We came back in when (fly fishing) was at the downside of the bell curve,” Simpkins told me recently, after I spent a morning touring the St. Croix manufacturing plant outside of tiny Park Falls. Here, close to 200 employees from a town of just 2,300 people clock in for various shifts throughout the day, and they spend their time doing everything from crafting St. Croix’s carbon fiber and graphene blanks that will, in time, become the company’s signature baitcasters, spinning rods, ice rods and, yes, fly rods, to wrapping guides on finished blanks and installing hardware on rod butts. The cross-pollination between traditional gear rods and several lines of both new and legacy fly rods is nothing new. St. Croix, I was reminded often that morning, makes fishing rods. Period. And the mission has stayed the same — to put those fly rods into the hands of anglers, preferably via the brick-and-mortar fly shop or sporting goods store. While St. Croix does sell direct to consumers, it considers its dealer base to be its top priority when it comes to putting fly rods in the hands of anglers.

“So, we really focused in on securing our dealer business. We didn’t do a lot of angler-facing promotions, because, quite frankly, we had left a number of shops that we needed to get into,” Simpkins continued. And, for the last 18 months or so, Simpkins and Zack Dalton, who came on board in 2023 as the company’s director of fly rod sales after working for Far Bank (the company that owns Sage, Redington, RIO, etc.) for more than 20 years, have devoted the bulk of their energy on putting St. Croix rods — both new and more familiar — on racks at retail outlets.

You might think now, after a good bit of time spent focused on increasing the company’s retail presence, would be the right time to start engaging anglers directly. And, Dalton says, in a round-about way, it is. But that engagement will come thanks to a strong dealer base.

“We need the dealers to support St. Croix,” Dalton says. “But we also need to be able to tell customers where they can go to find our fly rods. And the best place is through the dealer network we’ve put so much time into.”

And how about those fly rods?

Remember that $1,000 fly rod? It’s the Evos, which launched in the fall of 2023. And, just to be clear, it retails today at $975. Billed as a multi-technique rod and constructed with St. Croix’s newest carbon fiber MITO graphene — thanks to its partnership with MITO Material Solutions — the rod is both punchy and responsive. The company released both freshwater and saltwater versions of what is now one of two St. Croix fly rod models that should be mentioned in any premium fly-rod discussion. The other is the Technica, a rod designed for dry-fly enthusiasts who target supremely educated trout. Like the Evos line, the Technica incorporates MITO graphene tech — this pricey material is used sparingly and strategically in the company’s carbon-fiber matrix rod blanks to improve both strength and responsiveness — I saw the material being put to work in the factory, and it’s no joke. Rods using this material only get a small dose thrown into the mix. As St. Croix’s VP of Operations Jason Brunner told me, “nobody would be able to afford to fly fish if we used it to build entire fly rods.”

Proving that St. Croix is no slouch when it comes to quality, the Evos earned industry-wide recognition when it launched — it was named the “best new freshwater rod” in 2024 by Fly Fisherman magazine. This year, building on the momentum of the Evos, St. Croix launched the Evos SALT — the next logical evolution of the acclaimed fly rod that, as the name would have you suspect, is ideal for the flats. Like its freshwater sibling, it’s laced with MITO graphene, too.

Cutting a small slice of MITO graphene for inclusion in a rod blank (photo: Chris Hunt).

Also this year, the legacy company released a tuned-up legacy fly rod — the St. Croix Legend Elite Freshwater is on dealer shelves now, and it, too, earned some industry accolades when it was deemed the “best in category” at the 2025 ICAST show in Orlando. The new Legend Elite Freshwater is a medium-fast freshwater rod for cross-discipline fly fishing, and, while it doesn’t have that fresh Technica pedigree, St. Croix says the new Legend Elite has been well-received by anglers at a solid, middle-of-the-road retail price tag just shy of $600. St. Croix has also “reintroduced” the Legend Elite SALT — a fast-action rod for inshore fly fishing with a retail price of $650.

Despite all the efforts made to court a worldwide angling audience with new high-tech rods and refreshed brands most of us can remember from the “good old days” when St. Croix’s business was much more fly-centric, the Wisconsin company just can’t help itself — it’s still a Midwestern company with a tradition that matches its northern Wisconsin home base. To that end, St. Croix produces its Tannic musky/pike and bass fly rods. The musky/pike version of this line is stout — I fished it for two days on a pair of musky rivers in northern Wisconsin (and even managed to catch a small musky). Built to throw flies that, once they’re steeped in the dark waters of a musky river, resemble a dirty diaper, these potent fly rods have a serious backbone (and each gets a dose of MITO graphene, too). These are “big game” fly rods that incorporate a host of St. Croix’s tech that it’s engineered over years. In addition to the inclusion of the new MITO graphene, the Tannic’s pike/musky rods are built with the company’s advanced reinforcing technology, its fortified resin system, and a tactical mix of St. Croix’s SCII, SCIII and SCIV graphite. I remarked, as I lifted and cast another massive streamer at the banks of the Wisconsin River on a painfully sunny September afternoon while fishing with St. Croix’s e-commerce manager, Curt Schlesinger, that the Tannic would be a fantastic rod for jungle tarpon. Maybe it got the wheels turning — we’ll see.

What’s next?

There’s no doubt that St. Croix has upped its game in the fly space. It’s been an intentional journey over the last four years or so, since that fateful dealer show in Salt Lake City, and the investment is palpable. From the launch of a pair of premium rod models and the refreshed Legend Elite, to Dalton’s hire that is specifically focused on fly rods and the effort to engage dealers, the company clearly intends to maintain its fly focus. And the timing appears to be good. For the first time in well over a year, Dalton said, the fly rod sales market is looking up, and not just at St. Croix, but across the space. And, he said, the growth in the market isn’t coming from those four-figure fly rod sales.

Doing the “figure 8” with the Tannic on a small river near Park Falls, Wisconsin (photo: Chris Hunt).

“We’re seeing consumer price aversion continue to kind of permeate the market right now,” Dalton said. “And we’re sitting in a pretty good space to kind of serve the anglers who are unwilling to spend $1,000 on a fly rod.” Because of this, it could easily be argued that the refreshed Legend Elite, then, is arriving at fly shops and dealer racks at just about the right time. According to Dalton and Simpkins, St. Croix’s investment in fly-rod sales data over the last several years indicates that the number of high-priced fly rods sold — those in that $1,000 neighborhood — is actually pretty modest.

“So the only insights that we really have are kind of calculated assumptions that we’ve made over the years tracking fly data,” Dalton said. “I would tell you, from my time in the business, of all the domestic boutique manufacturers combined, the rough output is about 120,000 (premium) rods a year.”

Roughly, that’s $60 million a year at wholesale split among all fly rod manufacturers, including Sage, Scott, Winston, Orvis, Thomas & Thomas, St. Croix, etc. For perspective, in the U.S. alone in 2024, manufacturers and retailers sold more than 12 million rods (not just fly rods). And the U.S. fishing rod market alone, according to Industry Research, is valued at nearly $1 billion. If premium fly-rod sales went away altogether, the fishing rod industry might not even notice.

“So everybody’s looking to kind of carve out whatever chunk of the pie that they can from (120,000 premium rods),” Dalton said. And, while St. Croix is playing in the big leagues now with its Evos and Technica rod lines, Dalton recognizes that, in order to compete for fly anglers’ overall dollars, particularly now, when most anglers aren’t likely to cough up a grand for a fly rod, there’s probably a better business and sales model. “We’re embracing the ‘good, better, best’ story,” he continued, noting that the company’s storied brands, from its entry-level Connect ($296) all-water fly rods to the venerable, U.S.-made Imperial fly rod line ($395), and on up to the new Legend Elite ($595) are much more likely to carry the company’s water on the fly side of the business. And not all rod-makers subscribe to that strategy. Take Winston, for example. The least-expensive fly rod the Montana-based rod-maker builds retails at $995.

“We think we need to make fly fishing more approachable,” Dalton said. “We’re just not seeing the market out there to support new entrants to fly fishing, which is probably a disservice to them because they come in, you know, under the misconception that they do need to spend a $1,000 on a fly rod. And that’s terrifying. So, it’s an immediate barrier to entry into the sport.”

The message? Yes, it’s important to offer stellar, premium fly rods to anglers with pockets deep enough to afford them. But, in the grand scheme of things, St. Croix is going to continue doing what St. Croix has always done: build and sell fishing rods. For all anglers of all types and for all budgets.

A new batch of Imperial SALT fly rods awaits finishing at the St. Croix rod-building factory in Park Falls, Wisconsin (photo: Chris Hunt).

Will the ‘resurrection’ continue?

It might seem a bit overly spiritual to assign something ethereal to a fishing rod manufacturer, but St. Croix’s been a part of the American fishing fabric for generations. And, believe it or not, there was a time when fly rods weren’t just a small slice of St. Croix’s annual revenue pie — as recently as 30 years ago, fly rod sales, according to Simpkins, accounted for 30 percent of the company’s sales. But, he noted, that was another era.

Today, as the company continues its re-entry into the fly fishing space, the strategy is clear.

“If I was a religious guy, I’d probably frame it in the form of a resurrection,” Dalton said. “But I think ‘reintroduction’ is the right term, for both the company and our more familiar fly rods, like the Legend Elite. And that means we need to be able to reach anglers across the fly-fishing spectrum.”

So, while it’s sexy to be able to offer a premium rod that stacks up well technically with other high-end rods, it’s likely more important for Simpkins and Dalton to lean into fly rods that have a better chance of finding their way into more anglers’ hands.

That means that St. Croix is rebuilding its fly-fishing chops by approaching today’s skeptical fly-rod consumer in a tiered fashion — good, better, best, as noted earlier. But, Dalton noted, what really sets St. Croix apart from other fly-rod manufacturers is that St. Croix has been, still is, and always will be, a “fishing rod company.” Fly anglers, if they read all the marketing materials produced by the high-end rodmakers in the industry, might be led to believe that each company’s unique technology that goes into their products is what makes those fly rods special.

According to Dalton, St. Croix’s fishing rod tech — and that includes fly-rod tech — is second to none. As someone who’s worked for other fly-rod manufacturers in the past, he describes St. Croix’s technological processes, when it comes to building fishing rods (fly rods included) as “ light years ahead” of those employed by the competition. That’s largely thanks to Brunner, who, over the last 30 years has not only engineered fishing rods of all pedigrees, but has installed a number of fail-safe processes in St. Croix’s rod-making facility in Park Falls. This ensures that all rods are crafted to exacting standards, from materials to production and throughout the course of any rod’s assembly. The St. Croix factory — and guests can sign up and tour the plant for free if they happen to wander through sleepy little Park Falls — might look like controlled chaos at first blush, but as Brunner takes the time to explain each and every step, it’s not hard to see how just about every fishing rod that comes out of the plant is going look and feel just like it should, and offer the angler — whether a baitcaster or a spey caster — exactly what they expect. So, when the new Evos SALT comes out of the plant’s complex assembly process, every rod is going to be exactly like the last one, and exactly like the next one.

“We know what to expect when a fly rod is produced,” Brunner said. “Every single time.”

The finished product on the racks of the St. Croix factory store in Park Falls, Wisconsin (photo: Chris Hunt).

Dalton agreed. “From a consistency standpoint, there’s a direct correlation between the end product and the testing each rod endures to ensure the quality of that product. Going out the door, our rods are meeting expectations. You’re not going to see anything like that in the space.”

So, as St. Croix’s “resurrection” continues, Dalton said, fly fishers of all stripes can expect the company’s entry-level Connect fly rods to be made alongside the uber-classy Technica designed for the masochists who subject themselves to spooky spring-creek browns. Every fast-action Evos SALT will be made in the same plant as every Legend Elite. And, it should be noted, all of St. Croix’s fly rods are made alongside its baitcasters, spinning rods, ice rods, and so on. That “cross-pollination” is one of the company’s strengths. Or, as Brunner put it, from an engineering and design standpoint, there are commonalities in all fishing rods — bringing out the best personality assets for each rod application is what matters most.

The company will continue its plans to bring more dealers on board and get back into fly shops in a meaningful way. Dalton noted that there are about 400 fly shops around the country that are on St. Croix’s radar. The goal for St. Croix?

“I think 200 is about the right number, if they’re the right business partners for us,” Dalton said. “But beyond that, this is something that matters to me a lot — being able to support the retailers that are supporting us is one of my number one priorities.”

And, he said, the local fly shop is the heartbeat of the fly-fishing community for most anglers. Being able to pick up a Connect fly rod for a new angler, or perhaps the new Legend Elite for the more experienced angler looking for a well-built rod at a great price is a valuable experience that really can’t be meaningfully replicated in the digital, direct-to-consumer world.

“We care about the existence of the community … of the fly shop,” Dalton said. “That’s why we’re going to keep our focus on delivering our fly rods to dealers, where anglers can get that fly-shop experience. That’s something I really want to see for us in the future.”