Goodbye for now - A letter to our incredible customers - August 31st, 2026

Well MFers, this is a hard one. They say all good things must come to an end. But damn, we didn’t want this to end. After six years, we have made the incredibly difficult decision to close the Musky Fool fly shop.

We started Musky Fool in 2020 with a pretty simple idea: we thought the fly-fishing world could use something different. We wanted a fly shop that took fishing seriously without taking itself too seriously. A place that truly, wholeheartedly welcomed every angler, at every level. The person buying their first fly rod just as enthusiastically as the person buying their tenth. And we wanted to bring that local fly shop experience to anglers everywhere, especially the ones who didn’t have a shop down the road. A place you could call, email, or message and get real advice from real people, just like you had walked through the front door. We wanted to share our love of fishing, chase giant fish, stand up for our fisheries, and build a brand that meant something to people. and a shop that felt different than anything else in fly fishing.

What started as us packing orders in our basement every night turned into a real fly shop, an incredible team, tens of thousands of customers, a podcast, films, friendships, fish we will never forget, and a community far bigger than anything we imagined when we started. We are enormously proud of that.

But the truth is, the realities of running a full-service fly shop have made it increasingly difficult to keep building Musky Fool the way we believe it should be built. We have tens of thousands of incredible customers, more five-star reviews than we ever could have imagined, and a community that proved to us over and over again that what we set out to build mattered. We believed deeply in it, put everything we had behind it, and gave it absolute hell. That is what makes this decision so incredibly hard.

The Musky Fool fly shop is closing. We will no longer carry the rods, reels, tying materials, apparel, and gear from the brands you’ve seen on our walls and website. And that means all of it has to go.

Over the coming weeks, we need your help. We need to sell through our inventory. If you’ve ever wanted something from Musky Fool, now is the time to buy it. Every purchase genuinely helps our family finish this chapter. Please jump on muskyfool.com and stock up at a discount. This is only while supplies last. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

The physical shop will be closed Tuesday (9/1) and Wednesday (9/2) this week. We will be open Thursday (9/3), Friday (9/4), and Saturday (9/5) for one final farewell with tons of discounts. Come buy some stuff. Come drink something with us. Come tell stories. Our entire staff will be here Friday, Gabe, Josh, Charlie, Quinn, and Nick, so please come give them a proper goodbye.

Thank you to everyone who ordered from us when we were packing boxes ourselves. Thank you to everyone who walked through the doors in Waunakee. Thank you to everyone who listened to the podcast, watched a film, wore one of our hats, sent us a picture of a fish, booked a trip, came to an event, or told somebody about Musky Fool. You made this place what it was.

Thank you especially to our staff. You helped turn something we dreamed up into a real place that mattered to people. You put so much into Musky Fool, cared deeply about our customers, and carried this place right alongside us. We could not have built what we did without you. We will be forever grateful.

There is one more important thing. Musky Fool isn’t going away. The fly shop is closing. The Musky Fool brand is not. In fact, somewhere underneath all the inventory, purchase orders, payroll, shipping boxes, and everything else that came with running a full-service fly shop, we think we lost sight of what made Musky Fool special in the first place. We’re going to go find that again. More on that soon.

For now, thank you. From the bottom of our hearts. Thank you for believing in this weird little fly shop from Wisconsin and for making the last six years something we will never forget. What an incredible chapter.

With love,

Dan and Jenn