IT'S a cutting edge material one-million times thinner than a human hair but 200 times stronger than steel.
And now one of the toughest substances on Earth has caught the imagination of a NASA scientist and Scottish angling legend aiming to make net gains on a grand scale.
A graphene-based fishing rod is casting a long shadow over the sport of angling with orders outselling capacity even at its premium price of £1,000.
Billed as the world's most advanced rod, it is hoped the avant garde technology will revolutionise angling techniques.
Work on the wonder material graphene, a flat sheet of carbon just one atom thick, won two Manchester University scientists the 2010 Nobel Prize of Physics.
Now it is being used by Inverness-based former World Spey Casting Champion Scott Mackenzie to design and produce the new rod in partnership with a Space Shuttle scientist and Formula One carbon and composites expert.
Three-time champion Mr Mackenzie, and engineering professor Gary Savage, have exploited its properties of lightness and strength, to help add precious yards to the casting abilities of salmon fishers.
Mr Mackenzie said “We had an incredibly exciting opportunity to take the art of salmon fishing to a whole new level by harnessing graphene in the right way before anyone else, and the results are proving spectacular. ”
He said the unique rod had just been launched commercially and has already been snapped up by buyers in the UK, North America, Japan and the European continent.
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“The rod is a game-changer for expert and less experienced anglers. It not only flexes deeply at the beginning of a cast but it straightens again powerfully, which gives you distance, and critically it also retains the vital ‘feel’ that salmon fishers need to adjust their technique and accuracy.”
He said he had fished his local River Ness, and hundreds of rivers in many countries around the world, since he was a young boy but never dreamed of producing “the world’s most advanced rod using such a material.”
Graphene has already revolutionised the tennis world, after equipment makers Head produced a racquet using the new material for Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic.
In constructing the 13, 14 and 15-feet Mackenzie FX1 rods, the one atom-thick honeycombed graphene sheets are rolled into minute tubes, which become threads that are woven and bonded with the unique FX1 resin system.
Mr Mackenzie’s graphene development partner, Oxfordshire-based Gary Savage, has worked on NASA’s Space Shuttle heat shields, and played leading roles in Honda and McLaren F1 teams that achieved three drivers’ and three constructors’ world championships. He said: “We have taken the best of everything we have learned in Formula One to create the best fly rod ever made.”
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A professional ghillie (fishing guide) for 20 years on the Ness, Deveron and in parts of north-west Sutherland, Mr Mackenzie moved into full-time salmon rod development and manufacture in 2010 under the banner ‘Mackenzie DTX – Designed Through Experience’. Four years later, Mackenzie DTX’s six-piece ‘Atlas’ conventional carbon rod won the ‘Best Fly Rod, 2014’ award from the UK’s leading game angling magazine Trout and Salmon.
He is a triple individual World Spey Casting Champion and captained the world championship-winning Scotland team in Ireland 2006. He holds an Advanced Professional Game Angling Instructors Certificate, the UK's highest casting instruction recognition.
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