Normark float rod buyers guide

[Ian Woods]

Yes you’re correct regarding the spelling. For some reason my phone wants to change it every time I right Diamaru

Speaking of Milo they’ve bought out another copy. It’s been along time since the very rare Triton and revenger was among us.

This is their current one. Order in from Italy as they ain’t over here. No idea what they are like but at €300 plus I’d expect decent. View attachment 29578


Just being chatting with Chris about these early mk11’s as it happens. He has a full deck as does Ian woods.
Some much better pictures here to illustrate them and show just how different they were to the later 2003-2007 version
Super slim blank at the but section
Massive stand off on the but section guides and you can see the tippings there aswell in red blue and green. Finding them is the trouble but generally if you do, they are a safe buy as the tips were thicker and way less prone to breaks View attachment 29579View attachment 29580
Wonderful pictures

I notice a little bit of bubble on the varnish on the titan/middle section lower pictures.
I remember many years back there was a sale of normark mkII rods, huge discounts on the rrp. The rods were on sale because of a little rash in the varnish, or had some of the decal missing....what you might call seconds. Appart from those very minor aesthetic faults which could have been fixed up very easily the rods were just as good as any other.
If I remember rightly Elton, the owner of Anglers net put bought one and posted a thread up to let the AN members know of them and I think a few members took advantage of the sale.

 

[Chris Jones]

I notice a little bit of bubble on the varnish on the titan/middle section lower pictures.

Three marks on the Titan and one (that's not as obvious) on the Avenger. To me, it looks like some plonker touched the blanks before the varnish had dried properly.

 

[Roy Daintith]

I need to look more closely as i'd missed that. Did the finish on whippings change around the mid/late'90's with much more pronounced and uniform varnish? Here's a (poor) photo of the whipping on the early Avenger and the varnish is very sparingly applied with the feel of the thread still there on some rings. Similar on both Avengers and the 11' and 12' Normark quiver rods I own from the same period.

 

[Richard Isaacs]

I notice a little bit of bubble on the varnish on the titan/middle section lower pictures.
I remember many years back there was a sale of normark mkII rods, huge discounts on the rrp. The rods were on sale because of a little rash in the varnish, or had some of the decal missing....what you might call seconds. Appart from those very minor aesthetic faults which could have been fixed up very easily the rods were just as good as any other.
If I remember rightly Elton, the owner of Anglers net put bought one and posted a thread up to let the AN members know of them and I think a few members took advantage of the sale.

I’ve seen afew with the slight milky spots under the varnish on the odd mk11. I thought one of those was your avenger Chris but i could be wrong. It’s cosmetic and just a little bit of lack of adhesion when applied. Bit of lubricant still on the blank perhaps when applied
It’s common on some old rod whippings where the epoxy would crack near the guide entry point and be left to take in water.

 

[Ian Woods]

Three marks on the Titan and one (that's not as obvious) on the Avenger. To me, it looks like some plonker touched the blanks before the varnish had dried properly.

Yea, that could easi,y be the cause of the little marks on your rods.
I think there were quite a few though, that had these bubbly patches in the varnish. I think they are an easy fix if they bother someone , or if they worsen at all.

I’ve seen afew with the slight milky spots under the varnish on the odd mk11. I thought one of those was your avenger Chris but i could be wrong. It’s cosmetic and just a little bit of lack of adhesion when applied. Bit of lubricant still on the blank perhaps when applied
It’s common on some old rod whippings where the epoxy would crack near the guide entry point and be left to take in water.

I've come across those little cracks on a few of my rods, not on the whippings, but in the over application of varnish/laquer around the bottom of a guide where the varnish has gone up the legs. I think the cracks are due to the fact that the legs do flex very slightly. I have applied a little bit of nail varnish via a matchstick onto the cracks to seal them, just incase of water ingress. You wouldn't know about it if you studied the rods with a magnifying glass! The cracks weren't deep and I need not have bothered really, just my OCD .

 

[Richard Isaacs]

I think they are an easy fix if they bother someone , or if they worsen at all.

I don’t know how you’d easily fix them without removing the coating down to the blank and doing this locally you’d never get a good enough finish upon reapplication.

. I think the cracks are due to the fact that the legs do flex very slightly. I have applied a little bit of nail varnish via a matchstick onto the cracks to seal them,

Yeah that’s it. Some epoxies used are really hard after a number of years and a knock on the guide can cause a crack. Like you say a little seal over it to prevent ingress or the crack running further should solve it.

 

[Ian Woods]

I don’t know how you’d easily fix them without removing the coating down to the blank and doing this locally you’d never get a good enough finish upon reapplication.

I used to have a couple od sets of daiwa whisker kevlar carp rods, they were excellent rods and I used mine for barbel fishing. One rod had a patch of crackly varnish on the bottom section. I scraped and sanded it off. I applied yacht varnish on the rod and you could not tell I had done it. I'm sure the exact same could be done with the normark rod if the owner wanted rid of the bubbling/crinkle.

I've seen brand new rods with cracks in the epoxy round the guides.

 

[Richard Isaacs]

I used to have a couple od sets of daiwa whisker kevlar carp rods, they were excellent rods and I used mine for barbel fishing. One rod had a patch of crackly varnish on the bottom section. I scraped and sanded it off. I applied yacht varnish on the rod and you could not tell I had done it. I'm sure the exact same could be done with the normark rod if the owner wanted rid of the bubbling/crinkle.

Fair play to you. I’ve done plenty of knocks dings and chips to standards where it’s very hard to see it but I’m not sure i could get a larger area to that standard especially if applied by a brush. Blending the edges together and getting even and round deposit would be incredibly difficult I think. A hard but flexible lacquer applied by spray would probably be my best chance of getting a near invisible finish if one suitable exists

 

[Steve Jeffery]

I have a friend who worked in Exeter angling around the time Geoff Salisbury was the brains behind Normark rods. Geoff used to take him to matches all over the country. My friend has a Titan I believe, that Geoff gave him. A totally unbranded prototype that is unmistakably a Normark. I've seen it in action on the Trent, superb action, lovely to see. I've even asked/begged to buy it, but to his credit, my friend wont sell.

Might well know of him then Simon. I lived in the area until i was in my late 20's and got in to match fishing in my teens. EAC was the go to tackle shop in the area. Geoff used to fish lots of our matches on the Tiverton Canal and used to have the odd pleasure session with a few friends after the tench.

I remember him in the shop swinging 1lb weights on the tips of the brilliant team normark quiver tips rods. Still have one today and consider it the best bream rod for short to medium range.

 

[Simon Archer]

The match team back in the day.

BR left to right, ?? Martin Foulkes, John Cockayne
FR Pepa Luxa, Geoff Salisbury, Steve Jackson.

 

[Neil Maidment]

You may be interested in Mark Wintle's latest YouTube offering. He talks about Match Rod Design and the many influencers over the past 50 years or so.

I've known Mark for almost all of those 50 years. We worked for the same organisation and fished together back in the mid 1970's into the late 1980's and beyond. Since I returned to Dorset, we have fished together again and talked (quite a lot), we live just a few miles from each other. Most recently, I took one of the battered rods I mentioned earlier in this thread to seek his opinion. I was led to believe it was a much abused 13ft Normark Noboron but it may be an earlier Professional (not a rod I've heard of), or more likely a "bitsa" rod made up from spare parts. Pretty much beyond worth restoring properly but I might just bring it back to usability as it was a rod used by my late uncle.

Those were the days! We enlisted the help of Howard Humphrey (Leicester Likely Lads) when we were fishing Nationals "up north".

Me - middle row 2nd from right (trendy shades).
Mark - back row 2nd from right (between me and Tony Hague (Bawtry/Leeds).
Howard - front row 3rd from right.

It was a big squad, Howard picked the team, Mark & I somehow made the cut!

 

[Roy Daintith]

That looks like a 70's rock band about to go on tour.

Neil, did you fish with someone called Neil Grant around that time?

 

[Neil Maidment]

That looks like a 70's rock band about to go on tour.

Neil, did you fish with someone called Neil Grant around that time?

I don't recognise the name. Back then we were a true "works team" Barclays Bank AA affiliated to the NFA. We had a very active and very well supported Angling Association within the much wider Barclays Bank Sports Club. Our Barclays Annual Championship attracted 30+ teams of 6 and was fished on venues all over the country.

The National team was born from that setup and fished in Div 3 of the old style NFA Nationals. The team was made up of anglers from all over the country. Mark and I travelling from Dorset to fish the Trent, Witham, Welland and Leeds Liverpool Canal. We had some very fine anglers in the Association but many of the top guys were already in their local match teams and fishing the Div 1 Nationals. Unsurprisingly they were not keen to drop down to Div 3. Eventually (after I gave up match fishing!) the structure and team was reformed and went on to spectacularly gain rapid promotions to Div 1. Mark Wintle was part of that and consistently successful.

 

[Andrew Burt]

View attachment 29611

The match team back in the day.

BR left to right, ?? Martin Foulkes, John Cockayne
FR Pepa Luxa, Geoff Salisbury, Steve Jackson.

Back left Pepe Luxa, back middle Martin Foulkes, back right John Cockayne. Front left John Coats, middle Geoff Salisbury and bottom right Steve Jackson. I replaced John Coats in the line up when he passed away well before his time.

 

[Andrew Burt]

That looks like a 70's rock band about to go on tour.

Neil, did you fish with someone called Neil Grant around that time?

by chance I spoke to Neil a couple of years back. He left the team well before that and now resides in London. Really nice guy.

 

[Roy Daintith]

Interesting - six degrees of separation.. The reason I asked is that for a number of years he was a work colleague of my partner and I met him a fair few times at after work drinks, work functions etc in the early /mid noughties. We are exactly the same age sharing the same birth date and year; at one work function even we somehow ended up talking about fishing and where we started when growing up etc. Talking about kit,I mentioned I had some Normark rods from the mid'90's - he told me he'd fished with/for Normark and knew Geoff Salisbury well enough from the'70's/early'80's ?'. He then volunteered that he still had all his rods from that era and that they were all stored in his garage as he hadn't fished for a fair number of years. My offer to buy them unseen fell on deaf ears ~ as with many lapsed anglers there was a ,' I must get back out on the bank again sometime' comment. I'd love to know what rods were in that garage.
You're right too, a very nice guy.

 

[Philip Ward]

Interesting history and good read. I'm a new member hoping to pick up barbel fishing tips.
I am also a bit of a fan of Normark float rods. I have two Terry Eustace custom 13' rods that I believe are built on Normark blanks. Also two rods mentioned in this thread:
Titan 3000 that I fish upto 17'
Avenger 3000 that I fish upto 17'
Those are my roach, grayling and chub, bream rods. My favorite for big fish though, and my most frequently used Normark. is a rod that hasn't been mentioned, it is probably Chinese:
Crusader 15'/20'
It was marketed as commercial carp fishery margin rod but is ideal for trotting big baits in deep water for big fish. There weren't many sold, the rod supplied to the press had a defective 5' extension and the writeup was uncomplimentary. The extension is good on my rod.
Edit, the Terry Eustace rods are built on Diamura blanks.

 

[Richard Isaacs]

Titan 3000 that I fish upto 17'
Avenger 3000 that I fish upto 17'

Welcome Phillip and very nice pair of rods indeed. Seriously rare especially the avenger.
Just a quick question, when you say you fish them at 17ft does that mean your using 2x 2ft extensions with the 13ft rods.

 

[Steve Jeffery]

by chance I spoke to Neil a couple of years back. He left the team well before that and now resides in London. Really nice guy.

I used to work for Natwest in Devon and knew and fished with Neil Grant for a few years for NatWest's angling team and saw him regularly on the local match scene.
I also knew Geoff and frequented his shop in Exeter. He loved fishing the Tiverton canal - I was Treasurer of the controlling club for many years.
Also knew Pepe who has also sadly passed away at a young age.

 

[Philip Ward]

Welcome Phillip and very nice pair of rods indeed. Seriously rare especially the avenger.
Just a quick question, when you say you fish them at 17ft does that mean your using 2x 2ft extensions with the 13ft rods.

Yes, both rods were supplied with 2 x 2’ extensions. The supplier said he had used them up to 19’ and they were good. I thought 17’ was worth a punt. Pleased I did, I use them with centre-pins. That extra 2’ can help a lot with casting and float control.
The Avenger has two tips, a standard unused one and the obligatory 1” shorter version. The loss of 1” makes very little difference so it is the tip I use.