How to master rolling your own rods

“IF you can tie a fly, you can make your own fly rod,” observes Mick Bell, owner of Bloke Fly Rods, a well-known supplier of both rods and rodbuilding components, based in Selkirk. A veteran of all the serious foreign destinations – Russia, Norway, Iceland, the Caribbean – Bell lives next to the River Ettrick and fishes it and the Yarrow constantly. His enthusiasm, imparted to me on various fishing and shooting expeditions to the Borders, finally encouraged me to have a go at building a rod using his components and expertise.

I also had the advantage of a local friend, Michael Lobb, who collects tackle, repairs rods to a high standard and makes his own, too. We often test fishing kit together and spend hours in discussion about the relative merits of old and new. You may ask, meanwhile, what are the benefits to building your own rod? It was once a much more common practice, and today there are so many good proprietary brands. Rod building is both fun of itself and revealing – an odyssey that improves your understanding of fishing, in the same way that fly-tying does. Traditional bench craftsmanship