Directed by Aaron Weisblatt
Featuring Dave Brandt, Bruce Concors, Rachel Finn, Rob Lewis, Ben Rinker and Joan Salvato Wulff
Producer, narrator, musician and vocals: Bruce Concors
Running time: 92 minutes

by Jenny Swadosh

“I am a fly fisherman; that’s my world...It is the black hole that I’ve fallen into and I like it here.”

-- Mike Canazon, self-taught bamboo rodmaker 

During the days immediately following September 11, 2001, I spent a lot of time walking the Raritan Bay shoreline of Staten Island after multiple unsuccessful attempts to reach my office in Midtown Manhattan. On one occasion, I accidentally came upon a solitary fisherman in a secluded stretch of wooded beach, seated on an upturned milk crate, heaving and shuddering in grief. That was the image I had in mind when I agreed to review Land of Little Rivers during the COVID-19 pandemic. I imagined 92 minutes of lone anglers in remote sylvan settings, lots of sweeping panoramic views, possibly set to classical music that would put me to sleep in an IMAX theater. I was wrong. This is a documentary first and foremost about a community lovingly built around the all-consuming passion for catch and release fly fishing. 

Land of Little Rivers takes its name from a region of the Catskills in New York State that is, indeed, traversed by numerous small rivers and creeks (pronounced “criks”). These waterways and the wildlife that live in and around them are dependent on irregularly scheduled releases from large dams that provide New York City with its supply of drinking water. Consequently, entire small town economies ebb and flow according to decisions made by engineers regulating a municipal water supply 100 miles away. The median household income in Sullivan County, where many of these Hudson River tributaries are situated, is substantially below the median for New York State and unemployment has been running high for decades. As producer Bruce Concors states in his folksy introduction, this documentary isn’t at heart about the titular “little rivers” but about the people who congregate in and around the rivers, and put themselves at the mercy of forces beyond their control. It would be more appropriate to title the film, The People of the Land of Little Rivers, or something along those lines.

Concors and director Aaron Weisblatt grew up in the small Catskills town of Walden, worshipped at the same synagogue, and then embarked on very different trajectories. Concors is still in the area. His refreshingly honest LinkedIn profile states, “I have done a lot of shit in retailing, fly fishing, fly tying, music industry along with film experience and would be willing to share some of that shit to the right company or person.” Weisblatt went off to Hollywood, where Concors tracked him down in his zeal to document the Catskills fly fishing community, and Weisblatt complied. I cannot recall ever watching a documentary in which the producer appears on-screen and acknowledges that his goals consist of having the film be in the Library of Congress and teaching the director a new skill (in this case, fly fishing). 

Over the course of Little Rivers, we encounter a great number of individuals (mainly white men) who occupy different roles in the discipline of fly fishing: guides, fly tiers, outfitters, fishing rod artisans, historians, authors, illustrators and educators.  All express the same desire: to pass along hard won knowledge about fly fishing to others, particularly future generations. According to the documentary’s introduction and press materials, there are main characters to this chronicle (The Wild Man, The Lady, The Legend, The Professor) and one senses that some of the river guides we follow throughout the film are definitely acting a part, while others, such as “Professor” Ben Rinker, appear guilelessly incapable of being anyone other than themselves. I’m not implying they are acting for the camera; rather, their persona is part of the package when one hires them as guides. 

The documentary’s subjects frequently reference their mentors by way of introduction, one of the reasons I characterize fly fishing as a discipline or craft, rather than an art. Many guides have entered into a mentoring relationship with a protegee, in some cases, multiple protegees. Genealogies are explored. In the segment titled “Shop Rats,” we meet Sergeant Marty Yi, an Army medic badly injured while serving in Iraq, who alludes to mental health challenges connected with his post-discharge life. Yi has attached himself to free-spirited river guide and self-professed hippie Rob Lewis, who is rarely seen without a beer can in hand. Yi lives with Lewis in his home, dubbed “The Sugar Shak.” While this relationship seems like a recipe for disaster on paper, Lewis, Yi and fellow shop rat Rylie Lake appear to have formed a family, or at least a master-apprentice bond similar to how trades functioned in the era prior to widespread professionalization. This is what hooked me on Little Rivers as a viewer with no interest in fishing: how specialized and constantly changing knowledge is transmitted across generations through different forms of transmission, wholly outside of formal institutions of accreditation and credentialing.

In one moving segment, “Legend” Dave Brandt interviews Joan Wulff, “the first lady of fly fishing.” Brandt is touchingly stiff in front of the camera, but it’s clear he reveres Wulff and is eager to express his devotion to her and to her late husband, Lee, who ran the Wulff Fishing School together. Sportily glamorous (she’s a former dance instructor) and eloquent, Wulff is a natural, especially when discussing the role of women in fly fishing. Although she observes the days of women in the sport as “appendages” to husbands is over thanks in part to the Robert Redford film A River Runs Through It, the observant viewer doesn’t get that sense from the documentary. We meet angler-educator Rachel Finn (“The Lady”), a cigar-smoking, Yale art school grad turned river guide, but, overall, there is a dearth of independent female subjects. 

In the final segment of Little Rivers, we learn about the devastating impacts of microplastics, run-off, climate change, citizen science fish tagging efforts, reckless business interests and freight rail infrastructure. In one scene, an indignant Lewis rows past an overturned train that has fallen into the river and is leaking diesel. The documentary was completed prior to the Trump administration’s devastating EPA rollbacks executed under the cover of COVID-19 economic recovery. Will the State of New York do what is necessary to protect the Land of Little Rivers from further harm by corporate despoilers? It may be that Concors and Weisblatt presciently captured an ecosystem on the verge of wholesale disappearance, and Concors’s quest to visually and aurally preserve fly fishing heritage becomes almost prophetic. 

Land of Little Rivers is highly recommended for fishing enthusiasts, outdoorsfolk, environmentalists, urbanites trapped in their homes during lockdown, anthropologists, cultural historians and all employees of the Empire Statement Economic Development Corporation. 

Available for purchase as DVD or streaming on May 19 here.