Thankfully the likes of Lefty Kreh, Pat O'Reilly, Jim Schollmeyer, Mark Bachman and other fly fishers, both in the UK and the United States, helped me to get rid of some bad casting habits. 

For a hundred years or so, fly fishing writers discussed casting with the aid of the hands of a clock, they suggest the rod should between nine and one o'clock. This might have been ideal for small chalk streams, but not for big rivers, reservoirs or the ocean - and definitely not so when chucking big flies in the ocean against the wind. I suppose that great angler Lefty Kreh has had the greatest influence on my casting, and my approach to saltwater fly fishing through his teaching in print and film. His personal tuition certainly helped me. I often describe Lefty as America's answer to the late Richard Walker. How wonderful it would have been if the two anglers could have spent time together. What a wealth of knowledge they would have given us. 

Over the past fifty years I have used dozens of fly fishing rods. In the early days, I used greenheart, followed by bamboo. These were nice rods provided you waited a week on the back cast. In those days I wasn't fly fishing in the ocean. Fibreglass followed on from bamboo, then we had carbon fibre or graphite as it was known in the United States, though I felt we didn't take glass fibre to its full potential, switching too quickly from glass to carbon. Over many years I have used rods from various companies such as Sage, Able, Greys, Scott and Winston. Today, after some twelve months of field testing the Thomas and Thomas range of fly fishing rods, I have chosen them for all my fly fishing. 

The T&T rods were tested under some horrendous ocean fishing conditions. Bonefish, barracuda's and sharks on the flats of the Bahamas. False Albacore, striped bass and bluefish on the east coast of the USA, Kingfish and big Jack Crevales in the Persian and Arabian Gulf. I can say with confidence, I am very happy with the Thomas & Thomas range of fly rods which are now used for all my fly fishing.