Terry Hayden was born in Terang, Western Victoria and grew up with his father who was a motor mechanic. Hayden joined the Victoria Police Force in 1967 until 1981 when he had a water skiing accident. Afterwards he had short careers including being an outboard mechanic, diesel mechanic and boat fitter finally settling on commercial fishing. He spent 4 years at Bermagui completing boat repairs and then 8 months at Coffs Harbour before realising life at sea was not for him. He eventually returned to Geelong as a shore manager and shore based engineer for a fishing company. In 1992, he decided that he would build a fishing reel. He went to Reid Engineering in Grovedale to gain access to a lathe. With help from John Reid, he was able to build my first reel which was based on the Crouch Reel. He made 40 of them, but priced himself out of the market due to the time involved. He was working for $5 an hour. In 2010, he was approached by Mick Allardyce who wanted a lever drag direct drive reel for chasing game fish. 3 months later he handed him the reel which has become the “WMH”. Due to other commitments, Mick had not gone into production with his reel and Hayden offered to manufacture them with Mick handling the marketing. In 2011 he revamped the AR with a change of internals and extensive porting and thought that it was a great concept. He made 20 of them in #8 weight size and all but one was sold before completion.
