About Marc Aroner

Marc Aroner has spent most of his life devoted to crafting superior fishing rods. His love-affair with bamboo began in 1973 when he signed an apprentice contract at the Thomas & Thomas Rod Company in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Under the watchful eye of mentors Tom Maxwell and Tom Dorsey, Marc received a pivotal, if demanding education:

“Of course as an apprentice The Toms’ started me out with the basics, and they weren’t shy about it either. I worked at cane prep, cutting, filing, and sanding, and I must have done it thousands and thousands of times before they finally had me move on to more sophisticated matters. It was a tough education, but it really taught you to master each part of the rodbuilding process and to learn it cold.”

When Marc’s 5-year apprentice contract ended, he accepted an invitation from Tom Maxwell to join the storied Leonard Rod Company in Central Valley, NY where Marc spent his days building rods in Leonard’s shop and his evenings pursuing trout on the Beaverkill. After three years of continuing to hone his craft at Leonard, Marc decided to set out and build rods under his own name in 1982.

“It was a tough time because it was sort of the end of the big rodbuilding companies. There was too much pressure to mass-produce, and too much pressure to try and turn rodbuilding into a real profit engine. It just didn’t feel right to try and build bamboo rods the same way that you would run a spraycan factory—the shortcuts really cut into the quality of the rods. So I decided to leave and see if I could continue to uphold part of the tradition on my own.”

Though free to pursue his own standards of quality and craft, the early years were not easy for a solo rodmaker trying to build his own business from scratch. Yet after returning to his native Berkshires Marc received an extraordinary stroke of luck.

“I got a phone call from a friend one day who said ‘Hey, Leonard is going out of business and all of their equipment is going to be auctioned off tomorrow. You need to get down here.’ So I hopped in my car and drove to New York that night. Of course, the next day the place was crawling with every rodbuilder on the east coast, so I thought to myself ‘no way’. I was young and didn’t have any money at the time. Yet for some reason—and I still can’t explain it to this day—there was a kind of lull during the middle of the auction. It was hot summer day and perhaps people were a little tired, I don’t know. But the biggest lot came up, the one with all of Leonard’s major equipment, and no one really realized it. I couldn’t believe it. So I shot my arm up and the next thing I know I was being mobbed with congratulations – I was now the proud owner of all of the cutting equipment from the entire Leonard rod shop.”

After bringing the Leonard equipment back to Massachusetts, Marc quickly developed a strong and loyal following, cementing his reputation as one of the premier rodbuilders in the country. His early training, coupled with a fanatical adherence to quality, combined to produce a steady stream of high-demand, premium cane rods. Fishermen, and especially dry-fly fishermen, admired the precision tapers and the smooth, quick action. Collectors admired both Marc’s aesthetic standards and adherence to tradition, as well as the fact that his acquisition of the Leonard beveler made him one of the few remaining rodbuilders with a direct link to the discipline, heritage, and craftsmanship of the old masters.

Yet after two successful decades of building rods under his own name—decades which also witnessed a renaissance in bamboo rod building and a proliferation of new makers—another idea was slowly developing. While Marc wholeheartedly embraced this renewed interest in custom bamboo, he also began to consider a venture that would pay better homage to the lineage and tradition of the craft. With this in mind Marc produced his first prototype “Spinoza” – a model designed in the fashion of early bamboo makers. He was so pleased with the result that he decided to make a limited number available for a few select customers. The response was immediate: customers were so happy with the Spinozas that not only did Marc agree to continue making them, but he also decided to introduce them as his flagship model. And so the Spinoza Rod Company was born, the product of three-and-a-half decades of classic rodbuilding experience but with a renewed emphasis on the tradition of craftsmanship from bamboo’s early golden era.