RUGGED CREEK FLY FISHING

Grown in Idaho, Rugged Creek has steadily been expanding throughout the Rocky Mountains and as far as Scandinavia. As all around trout fishermen with a soft spot for steelhead, Mark Semons and his son Jake founded Rugged Creek in 2011 with the idea that they could offer a better value on two handed fly rods. What began as sourcing the best value in lower cost gear to provide solid entry level setups slowly developed into a passion for design and higher quality products. Everything we sell is inspired by time on the water. Everything we put our name behind must work at least as well if not better than anything else on the market. And, it should be reasonably priced. Currently residing in Norway, Jake is the sales manager and product design manager at Rugged Creek. He is also the definition of a fly bum. He regularly ditches work and lets other people pick up his slack, and when you finally manage to get ahold of him he will most likely be on a river or in the vicinity of one. However, time spent on the water leads to innovative design and an understanding how and why gear should work the way it does. With experience in both medical and sporting goods engineering Dominic Aiello has been a very welcome addition to the Rugged Creek family. He has worked extensively on the engineering end of our US made GRProto fly reels. While he may spend more time sitting behind the computer in CAD than most, he understands the importance of good old fashioned hands on R&D, which is why his laboratory is located on a private stretch of river at 10,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies. Mark is the founder of Rugged Creek. While he may tend to be tied up with work most of the time he is slowly creeping up on retirement, and when that day comes he is most likely to be spotted somewhere on the Salmon or Clearwater river in Idaho in his homemade aluminum camper. That is, once his camper is finished. He just needs to retire first in order to find any time to finish it. But it will be a grand camper once it is done! When he does manage to ...