Following the success of my fly lines, I began looking into ways to improve flyrod designs because at the time rods were either slow and cumbersome or far to stiff for the average caster to handle.

My early work with Bruce & Walker was frustrated by the limitations of strength and action you get from building rods one piece, cutting the sections to length and then joining them using spigot ferrules and it was not until I teemed up with Dr Stephen Harrison in Liverpool in about 1994 that things really started to motor.

By using specially tapered mandrels to roll the blanks Stephen made it possible for us to use different modulus (strengths) carbon cloth in different sections of a rod and match them together using what are now know as overlap ferrules.

This meant that we could use, say, a low modulus carbon in the butt section, making the rod flex easily but then an increasingly higher modulus in the upper sections making them recover quickly. Effectively again the best of both worlds A rod that loads easily in the butt and middle section to make it easy to cast, but with a good stiff tip section to throw a loop tight enough to satisfy an expert!

Another advantage is that the blanks are very slim in profile, reducing air resistance and improving balance and it became possible to make rods precisely sprung to suit line weights for a variety of different fishing techniques. Current models include the Arrowhead SpeyCaster Salmon rods the Bluwater salt water rods and my ArrowHead Poacher, Stalker, All-rounder, Longbow, and Competitor single handed fly rods.

I still stand by the claim that my ArrowHead rods are as good or better than even the most expensive fly rods on the market ...and often at less than half the price. They are exclusive to me and were designed simply to make casting easier for fly fishers of all abilities. They are also the only rods I use when demonstrating: the ones you’ll see me with when I’m out in front of the crowds on the casting platform at the CLA Game Fair.