My name is Jim Shepard. I am the owner and sole employee of Shep’s Custom Rods. I was born in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, a small town near Lake Geneva. As a teenager, I had a small fishing boat which I kept at Lauderdale Lakes. My love of boats and water was born out of those summers “messing about” in that small boat. Like so many others, once exposed to boats and water, I found myself addicted. My love of fishing was not so much learned from my father as it was inherited.
Our family photo albums are filled with pictures of musky fishing trips to Hayward, Wisconsin. Sometime in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s, my grandfather started taking my father and his brother musky fishing in Northern Wisconsin. They always stayed at Kelsey’s Musky Haven on Crane Lake.
Each year, my parents, uncle, grandparents and often close friends would find themselves on the Chippewa Flowage at Kelsey’s. Soon it became an annual “reunion” of sorts. My father died before I was old enough to tag along on those musky trips, but the pull of the North Woods seems to have tugged at me my entire life. I now spend as much time as possible fishing northern Wisconsin, and the remainder of my time on the various waters around Kansas City where my wife Carol and I reside.
I have been building custom fishing rods since the early eighties when a fly fisherman named Jim Lake introduced me to the craft in Logan, Utah. It was a hobby of mine until I moved to Kansas City and found that one of the legends in the rod-building world lived an hour and a half from me. Through trips to his shop, and time spent with he and his wife, my interest in rod building became more and more consuming. As a result , I decided to launch my own custom rod company and so created Shep’s Custom Rods.
I truly enjoy the process of designing custom fishing rods matched precisely with the needs of each customer. If you are interested in a custom rod, I encourage you to contact me and discuss design considerations. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by our customer service. Call the business phone, my cell phone, or drop us an email. I will personally return all inquiries as soon as possible. Click on the "contact us" page, and take the first step towards rewarding yourself or someone you love with a custom fishing rod.
My love of fishing was not so much learned from my father as it was inherited.
