FLY FISHING
Fly fishing—the guides who read the water, the rod makers who build the tools by hand, and the flies and tackle up close. Portraits and still lifes from the rivers of the Northeast and the benches where the craft is kept alive.
Ben Rinker
He has guided the Upper Delaware for over 30 years, running float and wade trips out of Hancock, New York, where the East and West Branches of the Delaware meet and run cold out of the reservoirs. He owns and operates East Branch Outfitters—guiding, instruction, and a room by the river—and ties his own flies at the vise. He is also a trained aquatic ecologist, which is another way of saying he knows bugs: what hatches, when, and why the trout care. He turns up in the film Land of Little Rivers, which is the right name for the work—small water, a lifetime in it.
Mark Swenson
He has fished the Farmington, Naugatuck, and Housatonic watersheds for more than 40 years. A commercial artist, biological illustrator, and photographer by trade—with work published by the Connecticut and New York environmental agencies—he brings a naturalist’s eye to the water and everything that lives in it.
Marc Aroner
He has been building bamboo fly rods professionally since 1973. It started with a broken fiberglass rod and a walk into the Thomas & Thomas shop in Greenfield, Massachusetts, where he met rod makers Tom Maxwell and Tom Dorsey and fell for the craft on the spot. An apprentice contract followed that fall, and he’s been at the bench ever since—his Spinoza Rod Company is a lifetime in split-cane.
