THE TEMPTATION for an author is to pack in too much in their first book.You don’t know if there’ll be another and you want to provide value to the reader, so you try to squeeze in as much as possible.

That accusation could certainly be levelled at the first part of Murray’s book, Going Fishing With Cane.The first 200 pages flit between angling history, deeply personal stories about the author’s own life and fishing experiences, plus advice on rod restoration and fly-tying. The second part of the book, comprising another 180 pages, is a detailed reference library of rods by British makers.

Makers are alphabetically listed, with the length, material and number of joints of every rod they made catalogued and dated, along with an estimate of the rod’s value. Photographs of rods, bags and advertisements help to break up the monotony of table data. Though any effort on this scale cannot possibly hope to be totally exhaustive or 100% accurate, the information is well- presented, and Murray is to be commended for undertaking a project of this magnitude.

The book meticulously catalogues thousands of rods, though the spreadsheet data feels somewhat dry and devoid of context in the absence of much information about their makers.This is where Murray’s second book steps in to fill in the gaps.

Going Fishing with Cane –The Rod Makers, is over 100 pages longer than the first book, but benefits from a narrowed focus.After a brief introduction and thank-yous, we are into the meat – an alphabetical list of British rod- makers, their trading dates, addresses and a biographical sketch of the company or individual. Again, the fact that cataloguing every maker between 1850 and 1980 was clearly an impossible task does not seem to have daunted Murray.

The level of detail varies depending on the availability of information, but they are generally one per page, accompanied by one or more adverts or rod pictures.As a writer on and collector and user of vintage tackle, I pride myself on having a broad knowledge of British makers. But I was only a few pages in before I realised how little I knew, and how much I stood to learn from this book.

Most historical works focus on London makers, the Redditch trade or Hardy’s, to the neglect of smaller or more provincial makers. Murray has an admirable egalitarian attitude wherein all makers – big and small –are included, from the powerhouses of Allcock and Hardy to the bit-player knocking out the occasional rod from his garden shed, and all are respected equally.A large number of Scottish and Irish rodmakers are included, many of whom I had never heard.

The writing style is conversational and feels more like having a chat in a pub about old times than a leaden reference tome that such a work could easily have become, and where possible, the author augments the company histories with his own experiences.

It should be understood that this book lacks the polish of classic works like John Drewett’s towering Hardy Brothers:The Masters,The Men and their Reels.

In the absence of access to a world-class collection, Murray relies heavily on images from catalogues and online auctions for illustration, and these are of varying quality.