Fly Rod Trends

A few times each year, I tally up the number of posts where Instagram users will post a hashtag of their preferred fly rod...just to see how the major company's fly rods are trending during the year (ie, #scottflyrods). I use to just count the number of followers from each company's account, but that is misleading because some companies sell other products like reels, soft goods, and other types of fishing rods. Out of the 25 companies I searched for fly rod posts, here are the top 10 companies where Instagram users are tagging a specific fly rod brand.

Scott (83,381)
Sage (37,911)
T&T (21,476)
Epic (15,089)
Echo (13,800)
Winston (12,856)
TFO (10,496)
Redington (9,420)
Douglas (4,984)
Orvis (4,954)

Note: This is just one slice of data I use to get a holistic view of trends in the fly rod industry. I conducted this Instagram search a couple of weeks ago...outcomes obviously change depending on when these searches are done and the hashtag used. This is the only hashtag that I have found to eliminate as many variables as possible in this type of search method...in view of which fly rods anglers are using when fishing. And no, it's not a scientific study. It's just something I do to get a feel for industry trends.