‘We were carried to the waterside in various fishing creels, baskets, custom-made fishing seats that doubled as tackle boxes or maybe a World War Two army knapsack that belonged to the angler’s father, or maybe even to the angler himself, after being demobbed from the Army, having been kept away from rivers, ponds or lakes, except where they formed part of the landscape being fought over’
It is dark and I am jostled in and amongst a great deal of other individuals, all wondering what our future is. Am I a gentle, wriggling around amongst hundreds, if not thousands, of my kin, not knowing what lies ahead? No, I am not… Am I a brandling or lobworm, nestling in some damp moss, along with others but still enclosed in a container where daylight enters only sparingly. No, I am not…
Soon I am tumbled out onto a flat surface and I am picked up,held up to the light and examined closely. Next, after much deliberation, I am once again thrust amongst others of my ilk, crammed together again without too much thought, indeed no thought at all. We are all together in this.
What am I?
I am a fishing reel. There is nothing much to set me apart from all the others around me, as far as I can tell. There are lots of different types of us in this old box. We are all yesterday’s news, yesterday’s precious gifts to anglers both young and old. Some youngsters may have begun a lifetime of angling adventures because of one of us, maybe more… who knows?
Some of us (well, most of us) have chipped paint, some have battered edges where they have been carelessly dropped, some have remnants of various lines still on the spools, some have years-old encrusted grease in their innards, clogging up the once silky smooth workings of a reel that was as carefully tuned as any fine clock or wristwatch. Some of us are seized up and cannot spin at all. A lot of us are no longer as we should be, we have parts missing, we have been butchered and maybe badly repaired. Our paint may be chipped, or indeed removed; we all have our individual problems, and unless you have the trained eye of a vintage angling tackle enthusiast, you could say that there is nothing attractive about us. We are all abandoned and we are in this together.
Once we were proud to be picked up, cleaned, oiled and polished, proud to have new threads wound upon our mechanical personages. Indeed, it was like having new clothes for us. We would perhaps have been lovingly washed in cool,clean water to remove any vestiges of baits that had remained after a day at the waterside. Then, after being dried and lubricated, we were gently and reverently zipped into fitted cases, sometimes leather, sometimes some sort of cloth or other material that had been fashioned to protect our shiny bodies, protecting our brass or chrome-plated wirework and our finely crafted, internal mechanisms.
We were carried to the waterside in various fishing creels, baskets, custom-made fishing seats that doubled as tackle boxes or maybe a World War Two army knapsack that belonged to the angler’s father, or maybe even to the angler himself, after being demobbed from the Army, having been kept away from rivers, ponds or lakes, except where they formed part of the landscape being fought over.
In those far off days after the conflict, when there was very little money available for recreation, make-do-and-mend was the byword; things were repurposed or maybe even made by the angler himself such as floats, boxes for hooks or lead shot, rod rests, the list goes on.
We reels were brought out into the daylight and affixed to some sort of fishing rod. Given our advanced years, it would have mostly been some sort of cane or maybe, for the youngsters amongst us, fibreglass but it did not matter, we were made for a purpose and that purpose was to carry the line that the angler would cast into the water, be it silk, horsehair or the more modern monofilament; we were there to assist the angler to bring a fish to the net, or to hand.
We would sit there upon the rod, patiently awaiting our employment, be it allowing line to spill off our spools and once again to bring it in, either under tension with a struggling fish on the end or as the angler cast his line into the darkening pools beneath us. We were strong and fit for purpose. We had sat out in the rain, the winds, the sunshine and the cold, in darkness or daylight, always there to do our master’s bidding.
I am a Mitchell 300, made in France probably 80 years ago, I have heard in the past that I could have been ‘collectible’although I do believe that some of my parts might have been replaced over the many years I have been of service to various anglers. I have had my spools replaced, my springs snap, indeed I have been taken apart and put back together so many times that I cannot with certainty say if the persons looking after me knew what they were doing, or were just tinkering.
Whatever their ideas and mechanical capabilities were, sometimes I would be returned to work, at other times I would be consigned once again to the department of discontinued angling paraphernalia, only to be resurrected once more by an angler with short lived, good intentions.
I have been in and out of use for so long that the days have lengthened away into years and beyond.Now I am old and tired, my paintwork is pitted and scratched, my ‘Mitchell’ logo has been worn smooth and lies under many coats of different, chipped, black paints. My bail-arm is bent so far out of its alignment that even I do not know if it will ever spin freely again. I may not have a serial number, my recollection is vague and I may have had at one time but over many owners and many years, my parts have been exchanged and it is entirely possible that some of me is actually part of another Mitchell, cannibalised and turned into a sort of mish-mash of parts.
Jarring against me as we are carried from place to place in this box, I have had many different neighbours rub shoulders: Ambidex, quite a few of them over the years, Intrepids, there have been several different varieties of these, other Mitchells, some smaller than me, some ‘junior’ types, some Mitchellsthat once thought they were the sports cars of the fishing reel world, having ‘auto bail’ arms. They, for the most part, were usually covered in layers of groundbait as they have been used and abused for match fishing.
There have been Abu reels, both the open and closed face types. There has even been the odd reel that I could not recognise as such, as these were designed to come apart, the spools to be face upward and then moved back to a position at 90 degrees in order to wind the line in; strange bedfellows indeed. There are other reels that perhaps have a different history and are called ‘baitcasters’. I know little of these fellows, they are usually quite small, and have been used for casting lures for maybe pike or perhaps salmon or trout. Whatever they were used for, they now are amongst us in this forgotten corner.
Of course there are the proper veterans, made of wood with tarnished brass straps on their wooden back plates. They are called strap or spine backs, or maybe star backs, dependent upon how they were made. These old soldiers have probably been left undisturbed in amongst dusty floats and ageing tin boxes that held their long gone owners fishing paraphernalia. Having been discovered, looked at and cast aside as something not worth the time or effort to make good, they have lost their polished, wooden lustre or patina and some may have cracked as they dried out, maybe their steel inner parts have rusted and failed.
These are the centrepins, our older cousins, which in days long gone were known as ‘winches’. Centrepins come in a variety of types, tin plate, wood, early bakelite, aluminium,pressed steel, various alloys and some entirely made of brass.The variety is quite a sight to see, small ones, big ones,indeed, huge ones for fishing in salt water, some for use by the game fisherman who expertly place a hand tied fly so delicately that the trout has no knowledge that it is shortly going to be fighting a spirited battle with the angler, deceived by his fur, or maybe feather, creation.
The centrepins were the simple designs that stood the test of time, they could be made by anybody with a bit of engineering skill in a factory, perhaps in the maker’s lunchtime, over a period of weeks, made from scrap ends of alloy or bar stock. Then there are the centrepins that were made by other makers: Grice & Young, Mordex, Reuben Heaton, Smith & Wall, Eton Sun, Tokoz, Strikeright, Dowling, Albern & Harrington.
There are many more to choose from, some very popular, and some of us that would never see the light of day unless a collector with an eye for the unusual finds one that takes his fancy.
Then there are the royalty amongst us, they rarely if ever visit, if they do so they do not stay long as they are coveted items which, once discovered, are carefully handled as they can be precious and valuable. They are old, maybe not as old as the wooden ‘winches’ but remain the benchmark of centrepin creation.
These are usually made by Allcock, maybe by Hardy or even by lesser known manufacturers like Coxon or maybe Kenny Kendall or other fine engineers. Some are completely hand-made by artisans who would never have guessed their work would one day be so desirable. Some of these fine specimens have open spools with springs and spokes, balanced carefully with a watchmaker’s precision; they have fine finishes to their bodywork and sometimes ivory, wood or bone handles, even stranger materials called xylonite. If they are discovered in the same state as the rest of us, it is sure that they will be slowly and carefully restored to as much of their former glory as is possible, and once more valued by their proud owners.
So we are all together, here in this box, tossed around and taken from one vintage tackle fair to the next and stood like yesterday’s news underneath the front of a table which, above us, will be creaking with things desirable, to be sold to the eager customer.
We are consigned to the floor space as an after thought, the box to be searched through and jostled around, the customer looking for the one thing that will suit his purpose, or maybe just being curious? We all pray that we will be the one he or she chooses, that we will be taken from this prison and released, cleaned up, repaired and maybe even given a visit to the waterside once again to perform as we were intended when made all those years ago.
Or maybe we will be stripped down, our parts used to repair other more worthy specimens of our type, or maybe we will be given a place to rest our aged and weary mechanisms, perhaps set on a shelf to be admired? That would be far preferable to our present situation.
What of those of us that are left? Do we remain in yet another box, who knows? Maybe our last bits and pieces will be useful once again.
Writing & Images David Craine – Spring 2025
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