This not a history of rod numbers and when this or that model was introduced..... This is what it is all about.....

Seems hard to believe that I'm 62 now and I have been messing about and building rods since I was 6. Bit scary thinking about it! I still love it though.

I remember aged about 12 - after messing around with garden canes and billiard cue rods my Father planed from solid lumps of Greeheart taken from left over wood from Leith's Granton dock piling construction (he was a joiner) being given a "real" rod. An old broken Hardy Wanless 7ft cane spinning rod gifted to me by an uncle. I fixed the delaminated sections on the tip with "Durofix" glue wrapped with thread and sacrilegiously used this fine piece of Hardy craftsmanship on trips with my Dad; flounder fishing in the East Lothian River Tyne estuary, lobbing out leads moulded on my Mum's old spoons. This was a huge step up from the hand lines and makeshift rods we had used up to that point.

On one of the access points to the beach leading to the Tyne estuary - a long three mile walk for my young legs over deep soft sand, we had to cross a wooden bridge over a small stream. The Biel Water near Dunbar, ( called The Biel Burn locally). Every time we crossed this bridge - a bit rickety - but still there today after all this time - we looked into the brackish water, I would see these dark shapes... darting - it seemed to me at the time for cover at the speed of light. These speeding fish seemed far more fascinating and mysterious than Flounders....

One day there was a man* (see note below) in the water upstream of the bridge fishing. He was wading and swishing this long, close-whipped 10ft cane rod back and forwards, with this thick looking line going out so gracefully in tight loops, with a thread of nylon attached to the end and what looked like a wisp of wool tied to the end of the wisp of line. The wisp of wool landed so delicately on the water and a splash would happen almost automatically and suddenly a fish was attached to the wisp of line. It was like magic......... I had to watch this performance. "I'll catch up Dad!" Can I watch mister? What are you doing?"  The man was very kind and told me all about the rod - a Hardy fly rod. the silk  grease dressed line and how it was cast and what it did. He showed me his boxes of flies. Explaining that some where wet flies and that some where dry. How the trout rose to the floating fly. This was fascinating - I was so intrigued I had to do this. I had to have a fly rod!...... Buying one was not then an option on 2/6 (12.5p in todays currency) pocket money. That small sum was not going to get me what I needed.

The Hardy Wanless 7 footer soon had a 24 inch solid green fibre glass middle added to make it flex. Older readers will remember rods made from this material. This was sanded and scraped down carefully to match the cane taper. Brass ferrules were purchased at another little tackle shop come ironmongers come off licence, just off Junction Street in Leith. (if anyone reading this can remember the name of the shop? Do please get in touch.) Rings/guides (called eyes then) must have been acquired from some source. My memory is vague on the source but I recollect cutting up and bending my Mothers hair pins.... It was of course just rubbish in comparison with even the worst off the peg imported fly rods available these days...... but it did manage to just about cast the cheap Gladding level braided plastic coated nylon line I bought from Ernie Foleys ** pet shop/part tackle shop at the top of Leith Walk in Edinburgh.

Fate had played a hand that day. Some things are just meant to happen... The strange thing is about this chance encounter is that we did not always use that access point. We sometimes did not use this route. Sometimes we would walk the shorter route (still a 3 mile hike across sand) to the mouth of the Tyne estuary along the "right of way" at Hedderwick Hill Farm, past Tommy Graigs race horse paddock. Even though this was a recognized legal right of way, the farmer was tetchy and very sticky about this if we where spotted. Warning us that we where trespassing... After repeated unpleasant stressful confrontations on past trips with the farmer, my Father, decided we would should go by the long Biel Burn West Barns route that day.

The Biel Burn gave up it's first Norwich fly caught undersize wild Brown Trout soon after. I was so excited with this capture that I killed it by banging it's head so hard against the toe of my welly boot that I knocked one of it's eyes out! My undersized prize, tarnished with only one eye, was still taken home on the bus to be exhibited with pride to my Mother.

So it was that I started a lifetime of rod making and fly fishing that has taken over my life and became an all consuming passion and been my profession since 1977.

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It still is a passion

From the first fumbling's with bamboo garden canes trying to make split cane rods as an early teenager to running a successful professional cane rod making business that started in 1977. It has been a journey of discovery.

I still occasionally go back and cast a fly on The Biel. I make at least one trip to cast a fly on it every season. It is an acknowledgment of it's importance in my life. The Brown Trout though small, are truly wild, and just as difficult to fool today as they were way back then.

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They don't all have to be big to be memorable.

A beautiful "Biel" Brownie.

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In late 1980 Mr. Walker of JB Walker of Hythe. Kent offered me their cane milling machine as they where proposing to retire and close the shop. I had been buying bamboo culms from Walkers for some years. The cane they sold was superb. Large diameter honey coloured 12ft long poles, straight and blemish free. All imported specially from China. I found out during a chat with Mr. Walker that at this time cane was well out of favour generally, that I was their best customer for the cane - and that as no one else was buying the cane in any quantity, I was the obvious candidate.

An extract from a JB.Walker Catalogue with an endorsment from Richard Walker dated 1952 -

and a mention of the then amazing 44lb record Carp weight.

I had been building split cane rods as an amateur for many years prior to starting in business it was a natural progression that Bamboo Split Cane rod building and repairs became the mainstay of the business. From 1978 though till early 1988 the business was wholly focused on producing hand built Split Cane rods. All hand planed up to mid 1982.

The business was very successful My series of LL"Long Lift" Swelled butt dry fly rods became a great seller and were exported worldwide.

Much of the production of 100 plus rods and blanks produced per annum where sent to Japan and the USA.

They are now quite collectable I am told.

Pictured right are the last cane rods I made. Part of a limited edition to mark being in business for 21 years.

The reel was a limited edition custom special built by Jim Ryall of the U.S.A.

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1982 was also the year I first handled a carbon fibre rod built from a blank Owen Caudle of Caudle & Rivaz had sent to me. Despite being passionate about bamboo and split cane rods and being assured from years of building high performance cane rods, that glass rods where no match for well made cane..... from that point on I knew immediately the fly fishing world had changed - this material was the future of the fly fishing rod.

As soon as I cast this rod I knew this was something completely different. The performance was Turbo charged in comparison with the best split cane rod I could make. Mentally I vowed that one day I would make these  carbon fly rods from scratch in exactly the same way I had done with my bamboo rods. I had mastered making those, I could do it again with carbon fibre. The will was there...but this was not something I could empirically build on and progress like bamboo...building in carbon fibre required expensive multi thousand pound specialised equipment. A technological pipe dream! The idea and ambition festered in my mind for many years...

Fate and chance played their hand once again.

In 1996 Greys of Alnwick the well known north of England rod making company were looking for a new Managing Director and I was approached by the company Secretary and offered the opportunity. Exciting? You bet! Well not so exciting when we got a look at the accounts. They were bankrupt £9000.00 in debt.. There was no job to take. No rescue plan that we could come up with was economically feasible that would restore the company and recover the losses to allow Greys to continue trading. There was just too much of a deficit to have any chance of rescuing the company from the hands of the receivers.

Due to the mismanagement of the encumbant managing director, Greys subsequently went down with debts of 1.5 million pounds. Fortune smiled on me with a phone call from the receiver some weeks later. All Greys state of the art blank making equipment was to be put up for public auction. Friends and the bank put sufficient cash in my pocket to send me off to the auction house in Alnwick with a good chance of making a successful bid on the equipment.

I got my equipment. Hardy bought the name and subsequently revived the companies fortunes. Sadly it was not revived as a manufacturer. It was absorbed, and the name just became another far eastern supplied warehousing operation.. It was not quite what I had in mind for a well respected well known long established British manufacturer. We need to make goods in this country, not just sell them!

Ambition realized David Norwich finally became a pukka maker of "in house" carbon fibre rod blanks.

Every rod blank used on David Norwich fly rods is now exclusively designed and rolled here in my Scottish Borders workshop.

1997 started another journey of discovery. Not quite as difficult a start as the bamboo rod making had been - as I had been involved in rod design with several well known rod making companies in Britain over the intervening years, I pretty much knew what was in store for me, but it was still a fraught time..... a steep learning curve..  I was happy though - I was in complete control.

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Pictured left: A customers salmon rod is being built. I'm holding up and showing all the cut carbon fibre section that will eventually be rolled into the carbon tubes.

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I am still dedicated to this wonderful world of fly fishing - indeed all types of fishing - not just fly fishing. Fly Fishing Rods are fascinating, and Fly Fishing is a wonderful sport that has made me many great friends amongst my customers and not a few enemies in the trade.. That's business though... Fly Fishing has taken me to many places in the World that I might never have visited otherwise. I'm amazed at times and grateful from the depth of my heart that anglers have kept buying my rods over the years - keeping me in business. It inspires me to know I can produce something that gives people pleasure from its use.  I thank God for the inspiration and to be given the chance to remain healthy over all these years to make my rods.

I never rest on my laurels though - I still search for the perfect ultimate blend of material and taper - that will take fly rod performance to the limit....

David Norwich

Fountainhall

Scotland.

January 2012

**Many years later I was in a position to take the lease over on the Foley shop. I had planned to move the rod making into the shop and open a retail outlet in Edinburgh. One hot summers day and on the way to shake hands on the deal with Ernie, I was stuck in a huge traffic jam en route in the middle of Edinburgh. I changed my mind on the spot! I just couldn't visualize me making the daily journey from the clean fresh air of the Border country to suffer the dreadful pollution from so many car exhausts to work in Edinburgh..

* In another amazing coincidence I found out much later, the "man" I met that day on the Biel turned out to be a cousin of Ernie Foley. The owner of the shop where I bought the fly line.......Strange things happen in this very small world of ours..........

Some pictures :- Stories to follow...

A River Test "cane"trout.

Houghton Club water, June 1982.

October 86 Tweed. My two best ever Salmon. 31lbs & 29lbs.

18lb River Tweed Nov 2004"Pedwell"

"Last cast"Salmon.

A 12lb plus Bahamas Bonefish.  May 2003

A possible World Record Bonefish for me. Bahamas 2004

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