New York is more than just New York City.
I’m Jordan Rago, and I build custom fly rods out of the Albany, New York area. Many don’t know this, but his corner of the country is a unique place to live if you spend your time outdoors. Within a short drive in almost any direction, you hit some of the most historic waters and mountain ranges in the Northeast. We’re sandwiched right between the Adirondacks and Catskills. You’ve also got the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts, and the Green Mountains throughout Vermont.
Growing up here, I was introduced to fishing early on by my father. We’d head out for bass and panfish, but the standard approach of putting a worm on a hook and waiting for a bobber to drop never really interested me. I needed something more active; a reason to read the water rather than just sit on the bank.
That missing piece clicked when I was in college and got an urge to go out fishing again. This time, I was specifically targeting trout, which quickly led me into fly fishing. The technicality and the focus it required hooked me immediately, and I never looked back. It wasn’t long before that obsession collided with my day job. Professionally and by trade, I work in the woodworking industry; a field that requires a lot of patience, a sharp eye for detail, and a specific set of hands-on tools. Moving into custom rod building felt like a natural evolution. It allowed me to bring that same shop floor discipline and artistic satisfaction directly to the process of building specialized tools for the water.
Because of my background in woodworking, I don’t look at rod building as just gluing generic components onto a piece of fiberglass or graphite. It’s an extension of shop work. It’s about calculating guide spacing for proper load distribution, selecting the right spine, and turning components with tight tolerances. I build these rods to be durable, highly functional tools designed for specific on-the-water applications; whether that means a heavy saltwater setup or a precise tight line nymphing rig.
A word on my “style”…
Every custom rod builder has a signature mark, and for me, it’s purple thread wrappings on the guides (almost always Fuji Ultra Poly Purple, or Kimono Silk). On the water, it’s a color that stands out just enough to be distinct without being loud, carrying a classic, deliberate feel that honors the tradition of the craft. Now granted – I’ve been asked to build rods of different colors; red, green, orange, etc.. none of which would look good with purple. That’s usually not the norm, but I digress.
Anyways, beyond how it looks on a clean blank, I’ve always been drawn to the sheer physics of the color itself. Purple technically doesn’t exist as a single wavelength of light; it is a literal trick of human perception. When our eyes see wavelengths from the opposite ends of the visible spectrum (red and blue) colliding at the exact same time, our brains invent ‘purple’ to bridge the gap. This means that purple is the only color that technically doesn’t exist; it’s what our brain reads when it has to invent a shortcut to connect two things that don’t naturally meet.
Beyond the science, there’s a reason that mix of red and blue carries over into my personal outlook. Without turning a fly rod bio into a political discussion, purple has always been the color of independence and neutrality—a refusal to blindly lean one way or the other. I’ve never felt entirely at home on either side of a dividing line, preferring instead to stay grounded somewhere in the middle. For me, stepping onto a river with a fly rod is the exact opposite of politics ; it’s a reminder that life is what you make it. Fishing isn’t about hitting a checklist or tracking a score, it’s just about being out there and focusing on the water in front of you (or sitting on the bank of the water, and not focusing at all!) Wrapping my rods in purple is a nod to that middle ground, and a reminder that not everything in life has to be taken so seriously.