Bring Back The Cane: Part Two

Clark Colman revisits a favourite moorland beck to see how an old faithful in his split-cane fly rod collection compares to a modern arrival from bespoke rod builders Tom Regula.

- Clark Colman

Truth be told, I don’t take my useable split-cane rods out of their slips a great deal nowadays. Having recently returned from test firing a couple of models in the new, utterly remarkable and soon-to-be-released Orvis Helios 3 range, I can’t see this changing any time soon! So it’s been quite refreshing of late to spend a few hours on the water in the company of cane, rather than carbon or graphite, while exploring the similarities and differences between older and more modern split-cane fly rods.

Serving Veterans And Honourable Retirees

My little cane collection means a great deal to me, given that the majority of it formerly belonged to my late, much-lamented friend and sometime family GP, Dr Archie Rankin. Together with many other vintage angling treasures (and one or two more recent ones), they came into my possession through the kindness of Archie’s family after the good doctor passed away in 2013.

Readers may well remember some of these items from an earlier feature in which they accompanied me on a successful quest to christen one particular rod – a two-piece, 9ft 5-wt Mitre Hardy – with its first-ever grayling.

Made some time between 1961 and 1966, as the result of a brief partnership between Hardy Bros of Alnwick and Benjamin Crook of Huddersfield (which made the Mitre footballs), the Mitre Hardy is the youngest of the wooden and split-cane fly rods that now occupy a dedicated corner of their own in my study at home. As a group, they nicely illustrate much of the evolution that took place in the materials such rods were built from, and in the techniques with which they were crafted during the late 19th and into the 20th century.