From our friend, Scott Papich, whose company Trackfly, monitors what’s up, what’s down, and so forth:
TrackFly is a data aggregation and analytics platform, connecting specialty retailers, brands and sales professionals. They are helping Angling Trade track key industry trends.
In the fly fishing specialty channel, October is never the biggest sell-through month. But this past October, compared against October 2024, generated the highest YOY growth we have seen all year: up +12% in dollar-sales across all product categories combined!
Of course that sounds great, but there are some notes to consider:
1) October sales growth was generally driven more by increases in ASP (Average Selling Price) than by Unit-Sales growth. Given the tariff situation the outdoor industry has been navigating this year, it stands to reason that those ASP increases are being caused more by tariffs than by either (a) anglers buying up into more premium product choices, or (b) brands and retailers strategically offering a more premium mix of products. Ultimately, it amounts to inflation. So in general, people are paying more, but they are not buying more.
2) The RODS category absolutely blew up in October! During the first half of 2025, it was down significantly versus prior year, and it was the last product category to begin catching up to last year’s sell-through trends, but in October it was up more than +40% in $-Sales over prior October. Talk about catching up!
BUT… there were two close-out rods partly responsible for the phenomenon. An unusually large number of Scott Fly Rod G-Series units moved through the channel, just in October; and an even larger number of Winston Pure rods (original Pure, not Pure 2) moved through a relatively small number of retailers. All those G-Series and Pure rods sold for close-out prices and undoubtedly drew fishing consumers to the category.
That said, several other rod models also sold well in October, and overall the Rods category showed strength.
3) Most other product categories also did well in October, but again we now see much of $-Sales growth being caused by increasing ASP’s, more so than growth in Unit-Sales. In this instance, as opposed to a classic inflationary scenario, it’s not being driven by increasing demand or increasing incomes so much as by tariffs. So, unfortunately, anglers’ dollars are not buying as much, and brands and retailers are not necessarily putting more to the bottom line.
We expect this tariff-driven ASP growth to continue through Q4 and 2026.
As always, TrackFly is here for you, analyzing real POS data in every category every month, and together we can dig deeper into the backstories behind the numbers. TrackFly is now building custom analytics, designed to answer your specific questions about angler/consumer behavior, across all categories and all brands. Call us.
TrackFly: “You have to make business decisions every day; why not do it with real data and insights on your side?”
