Small is the new Big

Them: “You should franchise Oyster or try and build your brand large enough to sell it.” Me: “No.” 20 years ago, we decided that making bamboo fly rods for a living was a good idea. Why? Why would we ever dream that our passage into adulthood commerce should be anything less or more than […]

Main Street, The Bamboo Fly Rod and Love

“Find what you love and let it kill you.” – Bukowski Quinn, me (hiding), Roni and Cutter My girl Michelle and her baked goods…that just happened to look like a heart today…really. Bill and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. We have never properly observed this particular holiday…well…we did once…23 years ago. While our memories of this fateful day […]

Karma and the Bamboo Fly Rod

In the spirit of full disclosure I must admit that the following is most likely inspired by my birthday. I turned 45 yesterday. Forty-Five. Four Five…Fifty less Five. Thirty plus Fifteen. Half of Ninety. When we started Oyster Bamboo Fly Rods, we were in our late 20s. In contrast, the majority of our clientele is and […]

lost, found and bamboo fly rods

Many years ago, while mountain biking on the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains, I panicked near dusk at the bottom of a treacherous decent… Me: “Babe, we are lost.” Bill: “We are not lost…we can always go back the way we came.” Bill and I met over 21 years ago in Athens, […]

EVER and bamboo fly rods…

Summer of 2014, Oyster’s Sequence of Events and Bamboo Fly Rods

First day of school Fall is ON! Summer is o-v-e-r. Where did it go? (see theory of relativity). It was here…then stuff happened and now it’s in the review mirror. . Life…it’s just a sequence of events, right? Some good awesome some bad horrendous. It’s just that simple. Most of us know We all know […]

"Do you remember the day you realized your father was not perfect?"

circa 1971 “Do you remember the day you realized your father was not perfect?” That was the question posed to me on a mountain bike ride years ago and it has nagged me ever since. I will protect this friend’s identity but she went on to tell me about that “fateful” day in her youth […]

Bamboo Fly Rods, Blue Ridge and the Five Year Itch

Bamboo Fly Rods and the Five-Year Itch Five Years. Five years ago today, we moved to the mountains of Blue Ridge, Georgia. Within the confines of my family…much has changed (we moved, relocated our bamboo fly rod shop downtown Blue Ridge, Veronica was born, Cutter “grew up”, we built a new building on Main Street…oh, […]

Bamboo Fly Rods and my Baby Boy.

This past week, Bill took my baby boy our son on his first camping trip on the Davidson River in North Carolina. Sometimes less is more in the words department. Pause. slo

Facebook, oversharing and bamboo fly rods

POST! Okay…these photos belong on Facebook…my children and Kory with their bamboo fly rods and huge trout! For years, Oyster Bamboo Fly Rod’s marketing department (me) has deliberately “opted out” of the Facebook phenomenon. Deliberate or not…and among other reasons, this marketing department (me) prefers oversharing the old fashioned way (face to face with a […]