16/06/2023
What can we say?
Quite simply there are no words. Today we closed up Rod & Reel for the last time.
Whilst we had come to realise that it was no longer what we needed we knew so many of you still wanted it and we tried so hard to make the legacy live on.
The last few years have been challenging, with a few global curveballs we didn’t see coming but there were some amazing highs. And whilst we are overcome with sadness for what we are saying goodbye to, we are also incredibly proud of what we achieved. Rod & Reel is unrecognisable from the shop we took over. Thank you to everyone who has supported us. To our families who helped in so many ways and stuck by us for every twist and turn of this mad journey, shout out to David for doing his best working in a tackle shop with absolutely zero knowledge of fishing. But the biggest thanks of all must go to Rory Smith and Josh Dorka for their unwavering dedication. We know you’ll all agree that they helped make the shop what it was, going above and beyond for us and for all of you. Boys, we love you and we will miss you.
We gave our everything to our little shop. But it was so much more than that for us. Rew and I took on Rod & Reel just after our first wedding anniversary. It’s where we brought our babies back too for the first time from the hospital. It was where we bunkered down when the world was told to “stay home”. It’s where we thought our girls would work their first job no matter how reluctantly and it’s where we thought we’d grow old. But the world has changed and so have we. People are having to make hard choices and running a small business is getting harder and harder. We know how tough things are for everyone but the harsh reality is, if you don’t use it, you lose it because along the way we started to realise we were living to work, not working to live.
It’s no secret that this wasn’t the ending we planned for and for that we are sorry. It deserved to go on but we have to believe that everything happens for a reason.
So folks, thanks for the memories, thanks for the epic tales of mighty catches and the even better stories about the ones that got away.
Fish on.
Sophia, Rew, Tanith, Joss & Gatsby.
X
