I am Old! remember these!

[oneshot]

No pictures but I still have the old Wood Plugs.

 

oneshot

[Al Agnew]

Old?  That ain't old.  This is a little older:When I was a kid back in the 1960s, one of my dad's fishing buddies still used them.  This one is on an old steel casting rod.

Dad started me on casting reels when I was about 8 or 9 years old.  He had been using these up until just a couple years before he started teaching me to fish for bass:They are Langleys.  Direct drive, very small and lightweight reels, were about as good as it got for a while.  Then Dad and his fishing buddies started using these:They are all Shakespeares.  On top right is the most famous of them, the President.  But Dad and his cronies didn't like it...too heavy.  On top right is Shakespeare's first free spool reel, the Free Spool Sportscast.  The free spool button is in the center of the handles.  It was okay, but after they used it for a while they switched to Ambassadeur 5000s.  The bottom two were the gold standard of direct drive reels as far as they were concerned.  On the bottom right is the Sportscast Direct Drive, my first casting reel, the one I learned to cast with.  It was a sweet reel that could easily cast 3/8th ounce lures, and could handle quarter ounce lures once you got really good with your thumb.  On the bottom left, the absolute top of the line, the Presidential.  It was a very light, very fast reel that could cast light lures with ease.

But then the Ambassadeurs got popular, and we mainly switched to them:Top right is a 5000 with the original handles.  But by the 1970s the oversized handles were the rage on the young tournament scene, and the other two have aftermarket oversized handles.  The 5000 was so popular that finally Garcia started producing variations.  The bottom left two are Ambassadeur 2500 Cs, a much smaller, though hardly lighter, reel.  It came with the counterbalanced single handle like the one in the middle, but I soon decided I liked two handles much better...I was always trying to grip the counterweight, so I switched out handles on the one on the far lower left.  Then the 5000 D, the reel on lower right, came out.  It was a free spool reel but with a direct drive feature.  There was no positive anti-reverse, instead you loosened or tightened a drag.  Tighten it all the way down and the reel was essentially a winch that had no drag.  Loosen it, and the handles turned backwards as a fish ran with your lure.  I loved it for winter walleye fishing, because I could loosen it almost all the way, and when I had a reel propped on a stick, baited with a live minnow, and a walleye would pick it up, it could run with the bait with little resistance, and the handles would turn backwards, but if I was fishing in strong current, I could set it to where the current would not pull out line but a fish could.  Sweet reel, but was VERY slow, something like 3.4 to 1 gear ratio.

It wasn't until the Shimano Bantams appeared on the scene that we started switching over from the various Ambassadeurs:Top three are original Bantam Mags, a terrific reel for the times.  Lower left is one of their cheaper variations that Shimano produced for the American market once the Bantams got so popular, a Coriolis.  Big, clunky, slow reel.  Finally, on lower right, the old green Curado, still probably the best reel for the money Shimano ever produced.

[lee G.]

I still use my Mitchell 409 that i got in the 60's.

[Norm M]

 Those H & H spinners were real weed collectors . Any of you still using pinkie jigs ? I'm down to my last doll fly jig  , it's been set aside . 

[cart7]

I started with an old Red Ambassadeur 5000 I got for my 16th birthday in 1974.  I remember well when the after market bigger handles came out and then the after market buzz gears that raised the speed from a pokey 3.8:1 ratio up to the blazing fast 4.7:1 !!!!  It was like greased lightning.   I still have that reel, works great but I've decommissioned it.

Those Lew's Speed Sticks were all the rage back then too.  Back in the day, the top of the line back then were the Fenwicks.  If you couldn't afford those you bought a Speed Stick or a BPS rod.   

I also remember when graphite rods first came out.  Graphite technology today is pretty cut and dry but back then the graphite rods had issues with snapping on hooksets... sometimes alot.  Graphite was followed by the next big deal, boron rods.  Those never caught on.

[Al Agnew]

Yep, I well remember the Fenwick rods being the top of the line.  Back then, the handle was totally separate from the blank, and the blank had a ferrule on the butt end that fit into the female portion on the handle assembly.  I remember when pistol grip handles first appeared, and my pride and joy rod-wise was a rod I had made from a Fenwick blank, carboloy guides, on a handle with a varnished wooden pistol grip!  I also remember my first graphite rod, another one I made myself.  The thing was like a pool cue, but it was light in weight and I tried to make it work for crankbaits--without much success.

Back in the days of the direct drive reels, that Shakespeare Sportscast I pictured above, my first casting reel, was on a 4.5 ft. solid glass St. Croix rod, and I thought it was the bomb.  Heck, after learning to cast with that set-up, every other rod and reel I got was easy!  I wish I still had that rod.

My first spinning reel, which I also no longer have, was an Abu-Garcia 314.  The 314, unlike the 308 and 408, had a round gear box instead of an oval one, so it didn't look quite as cool, but it was a sweet reel.  I paired it with a Garcia Conolon rod that was a very pretty sky blue color, and absolutely loved it.  After replacing a couple of bail springs in that reel, I read about cutting the bail off and decided to go for it.  It was absolutely perfect with the bail cut off, fitting my hand so well that I could operate it without the bail without thinking about it.  It convinced me that cutting the bail off was the only way to go, so when I got a 408, I immediately cut the bail off that brand new reel.  Unfortunately, I never noticed that the bail rotated the opposite direction in the 408.  Instead of the bail roller coming around as you began to reel and naturally taking the line off your index finger, it came around the other way and pushed the line farther up your finger!  So it didn't work at all without the bail.  That was an expensive lesson.  But I used that 314 until the Zebco Cardinals first came out, and then switched to them.  Those original Cardinals were state of the art, for sure.  The first really smooth reels, and practically indestructible.  Reeling one felt like silk--even brand new, the Garcias felt like egg-beaters.  

[cart7]

Another older rod that's still made today is the Berkeley Lightning Rod.  I remember when those first came out in the very early 80's.  Maybe even as early as the late 70's.  Hypalon Pistol grip rods in 5 1/2 and 6 ft lengths, IM6 construction.  Those rods were w-a-y ahead of their times and extremely reasonably priced.  I still have 2 of mine and even today those rods are incredible performers.  They're still made and sold at Walmart.  I haven't tried one made in the last 10 - 15 years but they feel great off the rack. 

[jim m]

On 5/20/2017 at 6:32 PM, Old plug said:

I had some of them. Can clearly remember when they were the new things to fish with. i come out of thr time when plastic worns with a tiny prop and 3 hooks in the body were the rage.

yep those were years in the future when I started, a shakespear president was a top of the line reel

[jim m]

Harry your still just a pup

[Jerry Rapp]

thanks for the memories Al.  The only bass I ever had mounted was caught using a 5000D at Bismark Lake in 1975.  Blue, homemade worm.  My first spinning reel was a Mitchell 300.  Big, sounded like a meat grinder.  Then the Cardinals 4!  I still have a couple of the first models still in the rotation.  They have never failed, knock on wood.  I even have a couple still in the box unused.  I tried a Cardinal 3, smaller version, but it just didn't perform like a 4.