St. Croix Rod tapped HM Outdoors to represent the company’s fly fishing brand and products in the Northern Rocky Mountain and Pacific Northwest states of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.
The company said the agency, headquartered in Bozeman, MT, has a 26-year heritage of working with manufacturers in the outdoor, fishing, whitewater, and hunting industries in the American Northwest.
HM Outdoors Owner Travis Morris noted he has lived his entire life in the area.“I was raised as a fifth-generation Sheridan, WY kid to a ranching family,” he said. “I fished wherever and however I could in those early years, and Ritz Sporting Goods was my hangout when I wasn’t fishing. I also regularly visited my aunt and uncle in Montana, where I’d fish the Bighorn, the Yellowstone and dozens of other rivers and creeks. I eventually moved to Bozeman and went to school at Montana State (go Bobcats), worked to establish myself as a fishing guide and served as general manager for the Bozeman Angler for 12 years.”
HM Outdoors officially began to represent St. Croix Fly on February 15.
“The Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest represent an incredible opportunity for us to reintroduce our brand’s unique heritage and exciting new fly rods to a community of anglers for whom fly fishing is a whole lot more than a hobby, a passion or even a lifestyle,” said St. Croix Fly Fishing Director of Sales, Zack Dalton. “Travis and his team at HM Outdoors have proven themselves a trusted resource for the fly shops and professional guides that provide the core of the specialty fly fishing community here, and we couldn’t be more excited to start working together to support these anglers with the elite-level products, technologies, and service St. Croix provides.”
Morris worked as a sales rep in 2006 for Brooks Montgomery, the fly angler and founder of what would become the Hart-Montgomery Agency and, later, HM Outdoors, the company Morris now owns.
“Our team at HM Outdoors is stoked to be working with St. Croix Fly Fishing for so many reasons,” Morris continued. “I repped the company for several years and have a personal connection with the brand that goes back to the early days of my own fishing. It has always been an incredible company with a heritage of building high-performance rods in rural America for over 75 years. And the team they’ve put in place now on the fly-fishing side of their business—Zack Dalton and Tom Larimer, specifically—are proving what can be done when you combine all those decades of rod-building experience with people who understand what fly anglers want and need. All you need to do is pick up and cast one of their new EVOS rods, and you’ll understand. Like everything else St. Croix does, they’ve done premium fly rods right.”
Images courtesy St. Croix Rod, HM Outdoors