I have always had this fascination for streams and what lurks in them. Some of my earliest memories are times spent terrorising the local Kokopu in streams around Thames where I was raised. Living in Thames gave our family access to the beautiful Kauaeranga river, which runs out of the Coromandel ranges to the sea beside the town. 

My father was a very keen trout fisher in the 1930s and so when I was young, even though he no longer fished, as a family we were used to spending time at the river. I remember we had this old soft action Greenheart fly rod with the bindings coming off and a solid brass reel that was kicking around the house. I suppose it had been my father’s, and was also used by my older brother Ian in his teens. 

My own interest stirred when I was 11 or 12 years old, but didn’t seriously kick in until my mid-teens. By that time, another fly rod had turned up at the house courtesy of  my brother.
It had a moderately good reel with a sinking line and came with a silver box of tiny wet flies. This rod sealed my fate for the next 50 years and is the first one of my collection. 

The rods above include a 2.7m Edgar Sealey split cane rod — a fine rod but horrendously heavy. I learnt to fish dry fly with this rod. When I pick it up today I can’t imagine how I managed to fish all day. By my late teens I was working, so able to invest in my own choice of gear. The 2.4m Sharpe Scottie split cane rod was better suited to the small streams I was fishing at the time. I received my first carbon-fibre rod in the early 1980s. At that time I had a young family and not a lot of funds so it was a present from my father-in-law who was a keen beginner at the time. 

Two  years ago I watched a DVD about salmon fishing in Iceland, which sparked my interest in Spey casting. My last rod, a 3.3m Airflow Carbon fibre Switch rod #8 with Airflow reel represents this current challenge. Spey casting for trout is a fairly recent practice here. I’m still a beginner but I enjoy it and caught my first few trout on the Tongariro last winter. It’s great to learn something new and it’s such an elegant and practical casting technique which can also be used for single handed casting. 

The rods shown here are just a few of my collection. I have a few more not shown, but these ones are the most important in terms of where I have come from, where I am headed, and the emotional links to my family for the last 50 years.