Letter To Hardy Bros----Am I Dreamin About Potential Market For This Reel?

[Englishman]

yeah, maybe I need to join a support group for antique Brit reel addiction.

I went through a similar frothing at the mouth stage back in the mid-80's--- I had a huge collection of Hardy Super Silexes back in those days. I didn't fish bait so I used them as fly reels. On a large Fraser tributary I learned that if you fished a floating line on a Super Silex and clicked the free-spool lever, you could float dry flies down a 200 yards stretch of river and with a long enough rod, you could come back and stick a fish when it boiled at the fly even when it was so far away from you you could barely see the boil.

Started doing that on the Skeena and was amazed at how effective it was for fall run steelhead. Perfect drag-free drift, it drove the fish nuts. Sometimes they'd boil five times at the fly before getting pinned.

I thought of writing up these experiences in trade mags but worried that maybe too many people would start getting interested in Super Silexes and eventually, it would drive up the price and cut into my collection habits. So I shut up about it.

Then in the late 90's I approached Sage, told them they should consider doing a Hardy Super Silex knock-off as people were finally starting to figure out that big steelhead would come up for a fly presented on top (sort of like the Atlantic salmon guys had figured out four decades ago).

Sage's response: we could produce a thousand of those reels and maybe, just maybe, sell a dozen....

So there you have it: one man's obsession is just another man's bored yawn....

I got the ratchet scream obsession. No doubt. Maybe a bit like Harley guys have to hear that throaty exhaust sound, even though the cylinders are puking oil.

It got so bad I started carrying a tape deck in a knapsack on the river and pinned a microphone to my fly vest. When I hooked a smoking unit I'd turn on the tape deck and tape the anguished shriek the fish produced on my Hardy collection. Then that night, back in my camper, I'd have a few drinks and replay the tapes over and over again.

One year I submitted an article to a steelhead mag, positing a theory that if you had enough tapes made of shrieking Hardy reels, you could eventually build up a library of steelhead symphonies--- by analyzing the decibels of each shrieking run, you could develop a catalogue of genetic strain differences by the sound alone. You know, a Dean fish sounds like this and a Chilcotin fish sounds like that....

The editor of the magazine politely declined my article, indicating there wouldn't be a reading public for such a thing.

He also politely suggested that maybe I wasn't carrying a full string of fish to have come up with such an idea....

So maybe I should forget the Eddystone thing.

Or maybe I shouldn't...

Sharphooks,
Ignore the naysayers. They just do not have an appreciation for some of the old classic fishing devices and mechanisms.

I love reading you articles because they are so well composed and described and you usually have some fantastic illustrations to accompany the words. It is almost like being there. (I have read you other threads about your solo adventures in Alaska and your trip with your daughter last year (to the Skeena I think).

Your articles are classics of the genre and some of the very best on this forum. You should publish some of this stuff in magazines if you have not already.

Anyway, I am not really an old tackle aficionado in your league but I still use old Mitchell 301 reels in freshwater (about 45 years old) and a Bruce and Walker (British rod making firm) hand made glass carp rod for salmon fishing on the salt (a similar vintage). Heavier than the fancy stuff you can buy these days if you have $400 bucks to spare but it will not shatter like the carbon fibre materials always do.

Anyway, keep your articles coming. I would use a reel like you describe in a heart beat. I pair my carp rod with an a wooden Peetz of uncertain vintage right now and it works just fine in a rigger (no real creep on that when wing nut properly adjusted). An Eddystone Mark II would be better still!

Cheers.

 

[Cuba Libre]

I suspect that Sharehooks knows about this site for antique fishing gear. I just almost cry to think of how much money I could have made if I had followed my instincts and starting buying English Reels in the late 60's.

http://angling-auctions.co.uk/?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=2

 

[Sharphooks]

Hey Englishman---thanks for your comments. Much appreciated, though there are probably some guys reading this thread thinking to themselves, ...."Yup, you can always tell when winter's around the corner when threads like this stars showing up on the site..."

Ya Cuba Libre---the 60's would have been a good time to begin collecting those old Hardys and Farlows. I got a late start---started in the 90's. By then places like the Granville Sport Fishing Museum had already swooped in and got all the best peaches from the tree...

I did purchase a few Perfects from the Angling-Auctions site you mentioned--- I had some difficulties with the owner of the auction house. I once got a mixed shipment of reels and rods from him and one of the rods, a 14 foot Hardy double hander, basically fell apart when I took it out of the tube (guides had broken free of the rod; thread wrappings on the cane had come unwrapped). They claimed the rod "was fine" when they packed it...

I had to pay a pile of duty to get the shipment into the country, then Angling Auctions wouldn't cover shipping back to the UK nor would they cover the wasted import expense.

Long story short, that was my last transaction with them. There was a big push in the 90's to refurbish Hardy reels because of the sky-rocketing value. Everyone was coming out of the woodwork with an old reel that had been beaten up---cages were wired or welded back together, spools straightened out, retaining screws were re-manned then "antiqued" so they looked original. Angling Auctions may have unwittingly participated in that fever. It was Buyer beware in those days, especially the UK eBay. Not sure if that's changed or not.

I got a 3 3/4" Brass Faced Perfect that had the "Perfect" logo and the "Alnwick" double-stamped on the brass faced spool. I figured one of the Hardy tech's must of had a hang-over the morning he put his finishing touches on the reel. I mentioned the double-stamp to the owner of Angling Auctions and was informed the reel is "worthless" because of that defect----ha!!!

It's now the favorite reel in my collection, precisely because of that "defect".