My Old Friends: Charlie Fox, Vince Marinaro,
Rossy Trimmer and others
By
Gene "Guido" Macri

Over 35 years ago I ventured to a stream called the Letort.  Within a short time period I met and fished with many of the legendary fly anglers on these fabulous spring creeks that I grew up reading about in the fishing magazines and books.  Charlie Fox, Vince Marinaro, Rossy Trimmer became my friends.  Such fishing insanity congregated once a month for fishing talk, drinks, and camaraderie known as the Letort Regulars.  Many of the same group met every Sunday for breakfast at the Farmers' Market Restaurant outside Carlisle where more fishing talk, fun, and sometime comedy occurred.

Those were some of the days of my youth growing up in the midst of this American Fly Fishing heritage.  It was just great and I thought mistakenly enough those days would never end.  But time catches up to all of us and now I have photos, and memories of my experience and days a stream and our wonderful encounters(The photo to the right shows Rossy Trimmer, Vince Marinaro, and Charlie Fox on the Letort circa late 50's early 60's original by Irv Swope).

I wish all fly anglers could have shared in those meetings and streamside chats but obviously they can't so I hope this website al least gives everyone who picks up a fly rod and reads these pages as well as the historical books a taste of what it was all about (Photo to the right shows Charlie Fox and Ernie Schwiebert at a special Letort Regulars Party held for Charlie Fox).

Those were magical times in fly fishing at least to me they were.  Our streams have suffered numerous perturbations over the years and unfortunately we have failed to put a dent into the corporate juggernaut that have defined progress on their terms and not ours and thus pollute our resources.

Streams like the Letort were the Mecca of fly fishing.  Everyone from Ernie Schwiebert to Arnold Gingrich (the founder and publisher of Esquire) passed this way.  These were the streams to fish with Charlie, Vince, Rossy,Lefty Kreh, Ed Shenk, Ed Koch, and others who knew something you didn't about catching sophisticated trout (Photo to the left shows my old fishing buddy the late Tommy Thomas with one of my good cigars at the Flyfisher's Banquet of Harrisburg.  Tommy was the comrade of Charlie Fox, Joe Brooks and others. He was a fantastic fly angler in his own right).

I will always treasure my time on these streams even though they are no longer what they were thirty-five years ago. They still harbor some of the most sophisticated and difficult trout in the world.  As one fly angler put it, "this is where you go to get your PhD in fly fishing!" (Photo to the right shows Charlie Fox and Lefty Kreh on the Letort on the "Bench" where many a trout was observed and many a fly was tied, circa, late 60's original by Irv Swope).