CastBack: How two Michigan pals launched a fly fishing gear marketplace

Inspired by the secondhand musical instrument and equipment e-commerce market, CastBack co-founder Justin Sivils, himself newer to fly fishing, and his experienced angler buddy, Dave Wines went into business together.

Their goal? Create an online marketplace to help fly anglers connect with each other around quality secondhand fly equipment, and continue growing the legacy of fine fishing instruments no longer in rotation for one angler, but still had a lot of joy to give another.

After just over a year in operation, I caught up with Justin to talk about how it all kicked off, where they're headed next, and what makes CastBack different.

CFS: Hey Justin! So how did all this start?

Justin: My partner Dave Wines and I knew each other from high school. We were co-captains of the wrestling team. After we graduated, we both went into the service. He made the good choice of joining the Air Force, and I liked eating crayons, so I went into the Marine Corps.

Around 2008, Dave came home from Germany, where he had started fly fishing. He's been a big outdoorsman his whole life. I've dabbled, but never really had any family members that were into fishing or hunting. He took me out on a fly fishing trip. I had no clue what I was doing. I was basically calling on him every five seconds because I got tangled in something. Half the time I just let the fly go down the river. I didn't know what the hell was happening. But it was time I could spend with him and be outdoors, so that was pretty cool.

Dave continued to take me out, so I just kept going. I mean, it took me a couple years before I even put a fish on the line. I seriously had no clue what was going on.

CFS: That's perseverance, though.

Justin: Yeah, man. And it's time spent with your buddy, so even if I don't catch fish, I really don't care. After that first trip we went to Cabela's. I got the whole Cabela's kit and caboodle for $250. And I used that RLS+ for years and years and years. It was fine. But then, I borrowed Dave’s rod and it was really nice. I think it was a TFO.

Using one of his nicer rods was when I started to understand some of the concepts I'd been reading in books, or seeing on YouTube videos. Loading the rod, double hauling, things like that. The RLS+, I mean it was fine. But there's a limit to what you can do with certain technology. I had kind of hit the limit on that rod. When I used his rod I was like, man, this is amazing. It's a whole different ballgame. That’s where I started really getting hooked, around 2013 or 2014.

CFS: So what made you decide to build CastBack?

Justin: I drum, and I collect drums. Years ago, an online marketplace called Reverb came on the scene, which started drawing folks away from eBay. I've gotten a ton of really rare, highly-sought-after stuff off that site. It's kind of the same type of community there—like fly fishing, where people are not necessarily there to make money, but want to see this thing passed on to a good home and be used.

The idea for CastBack came about in 2024 when Dave and I went on a trip up to the Au Sable, which is a very popular river in Michigan. We did a weekend trip up there. I like having nice things, particularly if I'm in a hobby. And we started talking about the expenses to get into fly fishing. I had outgrown the Cabela's rod, but I didn’t have a thousand dollars to drop on some Thomas and Thomas or something like that.

With that idea in mind we thought, "Well, there's got to be a space like that for fly fishing gear, right?" There's got to be a middle ground where I don't have to buy the cheap cheap rod, but I can get something decent, or even high-quality, for a reasonable price. We spent quite a while after that trip looking for something like this and really could not find anything. 

"There's got to be a middle ground where I don't have to buy the cheap cheap rod, but I can get something that is decent, or even high-quality for a decent price."

eBay's currently the primary place for used fly fishing gear. I bought a couple rods off a guy there who runs his whole fly gear business on eBay. He had been sharing with me how eBay knows the demographic of fly fishers, and they know they can charge more fees for these items. He was paying anywhere from 15 to 20 percent of his rod sales on fees: A significant gouge for his business.

That's when we had the idea for CastBack. Those two things came together: One, there's no real "eBay for fly fishing" and then two, the place that is supposed to be the marketplace of the world is starting to gouge people, which is no surprise.

I've never been somebody that goes out and is entrepreneurial or anything like that. I've got a stable job; I got kids to feed. So it took a lot of consideration for us to really think this was worthwhile. But the more we talked to people, the more they're like "That's a brilliant idea!"

Dave and I, really, our whole goal here is not to get rich. We're not trying to buy mansions, we're not trying to do anything big. We want to be able to give back to our community. Since I've started to connect with people, I found nothing but positive, helpful people that will go out of their way to text or call—I don't know any of these people—just to talk about things like, "Oh, this fly does really well in this water." I've had hour-long conversations with strangers about a fly just because they want to talk about it. They're not in it for anything else, other than building the community.

We really wanted to focus on that. Keep fees as low as possible, create this space for hobby anglers—not big businesses.

How to buy a used fly rod: Six steps to get started
In addition to CastBack there are other sources you can scour—online and off—to get a great deal on a used fly rod. Read our six tips, and get a checklist to follow when evaluating a used rod.

Get smart about buying a used fly rod

CFS: How long did it take you to go from idea to launch?

Justin: We spent probably a month after the Au Sable trip going back and forth about "Is this something worthwhile, are we just gonna throw money out the door?" Dave's got four little kids and I've got two, so we needed our families on board and we need to make sure we have the money to at least get some steam going.

We spent a ton of time on GPT, researching, pulling stats, making sure those stats were accurate so we weren't chasing red herrings. Then early August of 2024 is when we established CastBack as an LLC. So it went from idea to official LLC in a month. Then we went from LLC to a live platform that November, four months later.

The other side of the house was building the site, which again, we had no background in. But we found a marketplace vendor to create an initial marketplace with no code. Unfortunately, they were a really small business too, and lacked a lot of features we would expect in a marketplace. There was a whole bunch of little things that created hiccups for our community, especially older folks. The barrier to entry is kind of high for them, and if you present them with a site that's clunky, you're gonna lose them really fast.

Early 2025 summer we decided to move over to a more customizable platform. By no means perfect, but it gives us more control over what we want to do. I knew somebody from one of my Dungeons & Dragons groups who was a programmer to help design the new site. Shout out to the nerds!

He was like "Yeah man, I can do all of this!" He jumped in. He has no background in fishing, so it was kind of a double-edged sword. We found some things we were making assumptions on. We were like "Oh shit, we have to explain that more." He also asked good questions that, if you're too close to it, you don't think about. We were able to get the new iteration of our site stood up right on our one-year anniversary. So, in a year, we went from nothing, to the first site, and to a new site with new functionality.

So in a year we went from nothing, to the first site, and to a new site with new functionality.

CFS: So how does the financial aspect work? How much does it cost to list an item, and how much does CastBack take?

Justin: The site takes a flat percentage fee of the total sale. The way we structured it is exactly like Reverb, where you don't pay unless you sell something. So it's free to sign up, free to buy stuff, other than obviously paying for the item and the shipping.

If you want to list stuff, that's free. If you sell it, we take 5% for ourselves to support the site and then we do push the Stripe fee (which is 2.9%) to the seller. Stripe is our way of making sure financial transactions are above board. We don't want anything to do with your personal bank account information. We wanted to make it reasonable, so 7.9% total. The lowest fee on eBay right now, I think they market it as 13%. So we're right around half. This community has been nothing but genuine, honest people—even on eBay. They're willing to work with you even though they're getting hit with these fees.

A little aside to share a rod I love available on CastBack:
My everyday trout rod for wind, streamers, and bigger flies is a O.G. Orvis Helios ZG 6. It set me back some $700 in 2008—a fortune at the time, probably over $1,000 in today's bucks—but it has been a steadfast companion. Even after a trip back to Vermont for some time in the rod hospital, after some fool left it on the roof of the truck and only realized when he looked in the rearview mirror and saw a FedEx truck coming the other way smash it to smithereens. A well taken care of Helios is a good investment.

Check it out on castback.com

CFS: So rods and reels are your bread and butter, but what else can anglers buy and sell on CastBack?

Justin: Anything fly fishing. Fly tying stuff, like vises. Vests, nets. We're still talking about what clothing constitutes “fly fishing clothing,” so we're being careful about that category. But a lot of the other stuff in the fly fishing realm—boxes of flies, waders—we're trying to be as open as we can without getting the possibility of it becoming a retail clothing shop.

One of our requirements is that you cannot drop ship stuff. You can't post a generic photo of a rod and not have that thing physically in your lap. Reverb is starting to see their downfall because they're allowing a lot of these overseas manufacturers, or people who drop ship stuff, to just post generic things on there and then it just gets really muddy with finding an actual person that's actually selling an item.

CFS: What big stuff is on your product roadmap?

Justin: We have been thinking about—because, again, I'm just ripping off of Reverb—they have something in there where it tracks the sales of specific things. So for instance if I'm looking at a 22 inch Full Ride [cymbal], it goes back and tracks the selling of that so you can see right there, "Oh this guy's ripping me off" or "I can make a healthy offer on that and see what I can do." Because again, same thing—we want to benefit the community, we want to make sure people are doing their best to be above board and not ripping people off. That's a good way of keeping it transparent and making sure people are educated on what they're gonna buy in relation to everything else, especially in the used market.

We're also looking at a reverse call-out feature. So "I am looking for this specific rod or reel," to make that algorithm so when somebody posts that nine foot 5-weight Thomas and Thomas that you've been looking for and can't find, it'll ping you and say "Hey we got it, it's here." And again by keeping this site-specific to fly fishing, we're able to bake those algorithms in a lot easier. eBay’s trying to find 50,000 different niches. We've got a long list of things we want to do. It's just we got to get the people coming and buying gear for that to happen.

CFS: What sort of growth have you seen so far?

Justin: We've got upwards of 500 users and a good chunk of those have signed up for our vendor accounts, so they can post fly gear to sell. Our socials are doing really well too. I think we're almost at a thousand on LinkedIn, with Facebook and Instagram trailing but still seeing good numbers.

CFS: What sort of partnerships are you working on to get the word out?

Justin: From our veteran backgrounds, we partner with Project Healing Waters, a non-profit focused on healing veterans through fly fishing and fly tying activities. We're an official Trout Unlimited business.

Through Trout Unlimited I just by happenstance ran into another partner. He was on his last week doing marketing for Trout Unlimited because he was leaving to create his own online marketplace for small craft.. [Ed's note: That would be Tim Romano and his excellent Small Craft Sales, part of the FlyLab group of sites.] We're trying to figure out some models where we can assist each other. Michigan's huge for boats. If you are in Michigan and you don't own at least a canoe, you're crazy. We've got so much water.

If you are in Michigan and you don't own at least a canoe, you're crazy.

Our next chapter is looking at brands sharing our values and are really trying to benefit the fly fishing community and linking in with those. I feel like right now four partners is a lot for us, so we're kind of stopping there for now. But between Project Healing Waters, Trout Unlimited, and Small Craft Sales, and FlyLab I think we've got a pretty good spread.

Thanks Justin! Keep in touch with CastBack through their site, and give them a follow on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. And look out for a rod that speaks to you.

If I see stuff I like pop up on CastBack, I'll share it in the newsletter, or on Bluesky. As always, the Fishcord is another great way for paid members to pick my brain about used gear and finding bargains out there.