The river is everywhere at the Maine Fly Company’s new brick-and-mortar shop, located on the third floor of a 19th century, red-brick mill in Yarmouth, Maine. Just outside the shop’s enormous windows runs the Royal River, a 39-mile waterway that stretches from Sabbathday Lake to Casco Bay.
The proximity to the water speaks to the aim of the company, founded in 2018. The goal, according to owner and founder Jeff Davis, isn’t simply to provide customers with top-quality, handcrafted, affordable fly rods, but to imbue every inch of them with a sense of where they were built: Maine.
“Maine, to me, is such an amazing place,” Davis said. “There’s peace here. There’s a small-town feel to our state.”
But it’s the raw, untapped wilderness that inspires Davis the most. In the northern quarter of the state, in an area known as the Great North Woods, are more than 12 million acres of virtually uninhabited woodland. Several thousand lakes and streams and miles upon miles of dirt logging trails zig-zag throughout this last great wilderness of the northeast.
That’s the side of Maine that Davis aims to capture with his fly rods. The new shop space, the rods, and Davis’s advocacy for adventure, ecological sustainability, and accessibility are just a few of the many layers that make up the far more personal story that is the Maine Fly Company. It’s a tale that begins with a legacy of craftsmanship.
A Father’s Legacy
Growing up in Lewiston, Maine, Davis was surrounded by makers. One craftsman in particular, an uncle on his mother’s side, was his favorite.“He had these incredible skills,” Davis recalled. Whenever he would visit, Davis would find his uncle working on projects, from wooden furniture to a stained glass masterpiece.
The second layer came from the death of his father.
A straightforward, but not unkind, businessman, Davis’s father discouraged his son from his original dream of becoming a cartoonist and to instead favor steady, corporate work. As a result, Davis found himself believing that engagement in craft served not so much as a profession or passion, but as something to be done on weekends. It was a line he walked for more than four decades.
Then, three months shy of the birth of his twin sons, Davis got a phone call. His father was in the hospital with what seemed like a routine clot that could be easily fixed. But something was wrong.
“I had this pit ... Something’s not right here,” said Davis. “And sure enough, I got the call at 3 o’clock in the morning that my dad had died.”
He immediately flew out to Chicago to help his father’s partner sort through belongings, make funeral arrangements, and set in motion the process of having his dad’s body transported to Maine.
“I drove [home] with his car and a trailer filled with everything and anything I could get out of there to help her. The abundance of that was his tools, and all his fly fishing gear,” Davis said.
He hadn’t grown up fly fishing. That sport was something he had never been able to share with his father.
When Davis returned to his home in Maine, he took out his dad’s old fly rods and began to practice casting them in the backyard.
“As I was casting his rods, I became enamored by all of the stories he used to tell of all the regret he had in not making Maine his permanent home; how much he missed Maine, and salmon, and the rivers,” Davis said.
He took several weeks off work, and, using his father’s hammers, nails, and screws, built a small barn in his backyard. It was a time of reconciliation, spiritual awakening, and healing.
“During that time, I realized a couple of things,” Davis said. “Dad died unfulfilled. He died with me feeling really awful for how he died and that he never got to achieve anything he really wanted to. He played it safe. At the same time, my kids are about to be born. And I asked: Is this what I want them to look at me like? Is this how I want them to think of me? All of those things came together, and I said no. No!”
Finding His Craft
Seeing echoes of his father’s life of quiet desperation, Davis knew he needed to make a change. He decided to quit the sales job that was leaving him absent from his family and draining his soul.The beginnings of an idea formed in Davis’s mind when he was out fishing and noticed that the guides, which hold the fly line in place, on an old rod were coming loose.
“I started scraping them off and picking at them and I thought: I wonder how these things are made,” he said.
As a way to calm his mind and be at peace with his dad, Davis began building fly rods in his basement. The comfort and enjoyment he found in the rod-building process prompted him to peel back the next layer in the story of his company.
“I started doing some market research thinking that there’s got to be a ton of people up here building rods. There wasn’t,” Davis said.
He looked into legendary New England-based outfitters such as Orvis and L.L. Bean, only to learn that they no longer make most of their rods in the United States. And the ones that were came with a hefty price tag.
Making Fly Rods
As Davis ingrained himself further into Maine’s fly fishing community, he noticed a disparity that he couldn’t reconcile. Here was this group of sportsmen and women engaging in what is arguably one of the most mysterious and individualistic sporting activities. They all had tied their own flies and had their own special fishing holes. Yet nearly everyone was swinging a mass-produced fly rod. Admittedly, everyone Davis spoke with would’ve loved to own a handcrafted, American-built rod. They were just too expensive.“I thought, ‘Maybe I can come up with a way to do this where they are affordable and people are getting these personalized, small-batch rods that they’re not going to see a million of when they pull up to the Magalloway or wherever they fish,’” Davis said.
To achieve this has been a process of trial and error. Sometimes working late into the night, Davis developed his method for building fly rods. The method begins with the design, which could encompass anything from honoring a specific fish or Maine waterway to, in the case of his custom work, matching a company’s branding.
Next, the rod blanks, which are the poles that form the core of the rod, are chosen. These are usually the most expensive component of the rod, and Davis keeps his prices down by sourcing quality graphite rods from a variety of different sources. Whereas other American-manufactured fly rods roll their own fiberglass or work with higher-end materials such as carbon fiber, Maine Fly Company cuts the cost by keeping things small, working in batches, and sourcing pre-cut rod blanks.
Once the weight and length of the rod are chosen, all the components are dry fit in order to nail down the design. Handles and reel seats are then added before the line guides are tied down with a series of colored thread wraps. A final alignment check takes place before the thread wraps are finished with varnish to prevent them from unraveling. The fly rod is then set to cure.
For the Love of Fishing and Family
Within five years of its official founding, the Maine Fly Company has turned into something like a family, which includes two full-time builders and works with a team of brand ambassadors.While Davis admits that the company is still young, its spirit harkens back to his childhood around the makers in Lewiston.
“We want to continue to be that handcrafted option,” Davis said. “To be an incredibly welcoming place. I think there is a way to save the heritage in a modern way that’s not going to appeal to everybody. And if this place gets to the point where I can’t return calls or emails anymore, and we lose that mom-and-pop operation feel, then I’ll say that Maine Fly Company has lost its way.”
As Davis eyes expanding his shop into an available space on the mill’s first floor, he is beginning to take some of the many layers of Maine Fly Company off and hand them to different people. As he turns 50 this year, Davis stressed the importance of this job being his last.
Meet the Maker: Jeff Davis
Age: 49Lives in: Yarmouth, Maine
Most prized piece of fishing equipment: My dad’s vintage rods.
Favorite place to fish in Maine: Off-grid, chasing landlocked salmon. For the exact location, it’ll cost you!
3 places around the world you’d love to fish: Salmon River, Alaska; Golden Dorado, Argentina; Salmon River, Idaho
Best advice ever received: Fall in love with the river first.
Best advice for other entrepreneurs: Follow your passion, not the money. If you’re true to yourself and put in the time, it’s a life-changing venture.
Fact Sheet: Maine Fly Co.
Founded: 2018Based in: Yarmouth, Maine
Best-seller: Little River 3-weight
Newest fly rod series: The St. John, made with bamboo, released June 2023
