Winston has a new owner, the first in 35 years. The Twin Bridges, Montana rod maker announced on May 14 that the company has been sold to Lance Robertson, a businessman and engineer who, as it happens, lives just outside Twin Bridges and is described in the announcement as a “passionate fly fisherman.”
The deal closes out David Ondaatje’s tenure as owner — by far the longest in Winston’s modern era — and brings one of the most recognized brands in fly fishing under new stewardship for the first time since 1991.
Robertson isn’t a fly-fishing industry insider. He spent two decades in Texas-based petroleum companies, most recently as president and CEO of Endeavor Energy Resources — until 2024, when Endeavor merged with Diamondback Energy in a $26 billion cash-and-stock deal. He still sits on Diamondback’s board.
So far, the signals are continuity. Andy Wunsch, who came in as general manager about two years ago, has been promoted to president and general manager. The team is staying put. Ondaatje will hang on as an advisor for a year, and Andrew Martin at Baird advised the company on the transaction.
For anyone keeping track of Winston’s handoffs: Ondaatje bought the company in 1991 from Tom Morgan and others, a few years after Morgan had moved the operation out of San Francisco and up to Montana, having bought it from Doug Merrick in 1973. Under Ondaatje, Winston built its fully integrated facility in Twin Bridges in 1995, picked up Bauer Fly Reels from Jon Bauer in 2016, and rolled out a polarized sunglasses line in 2024. The catalog today covers the Air 2 and Pure 2 graphite lines, the Bauer SLT, RX, and RVR reels, and a small annual run of bamboo rods still built by hand in a dedicated shop on the property — a thread that runs all the way back to 1929, when Lew Stoner and Robert Winther founded the original Winther-Stoner Manufacturing Company in San Francisco. (The “Winston” name is a combination of their last names.)
MidCurrent has spent time with much of what Winston builds today — see our reviews of the 8’6″ 5-weight Air 2, the 7’9″ 4-weight Pure 2, and the polarized sunglasses Winston launched in 2024.
