Moreno Borriero

 

My name is Moreno Borriero. I was born in South Africa in 1961 where I started fishing with my father. In 1980 I moved to Italy and was surprised to find out that you could fly fish for trout in Tuscany. I started with the first basics in 1981 thanks to a university friend and the virus caught on! I have always been crazy about fly fishing. In 2000 I became the Chairman of my fishing club which has always been involved in river management and safeguarding the ecosystem. Thanks to these experiences, in 2002 I started guiding professionally. In 2006 I caught another very serious virus which has led me towards split cane rodmaking www.mbrods.com. I am now making and selling rods for many countries mainly in Europe and USA. I am now Vice President of the Italian Bamboo Rodmakers Association Gabriele Gori. I collaborate with the Bamboo Journal www.rodmakers.eu.

I guide professionally in central Italy, mostly in Tuscany and Umbria on a number of rivers like Lima, Serchio, Tevere and Nera – www.mbrods.it. As a guide I have been forced to develop easy to tie functional flies that are user friendly for the vast majority of fly fishers. My favourite flies are made with CDC which I find a wonderful material for tying flies. It is imitative, lends a fantastic life like movement to the flies and over the past years I have learned to use it successfully. When I started guiding, I thought I could use my CDC flies with my guests but soon discovered that many had problems with seeing these flies and with getting them to stay afloat. So, what was the solution? After a great deal of thought I decided that it would be a good idea to mix CDC with other materials either natural or synthetic. It worked! Mixing CDC with cock hackles or deer hair proved successful. A few years back I started using foam and this also proved extremely helpful with my foreign guests. I find that the mixing of CDC with foam is proving a winner that has made life a lot easier for my work as a professional guide.