In the long months that are January and February, apart from making preparations for the trout season, I sometimes have a short outing targeting pollock and coal-fish.
This year I combined the pollock pursuit with another challenge. I like vintage tackle and believe that many decent but discarded items of tackle are still very capable of doing a good job. I hate throwing away perfectly functional tackle to see it replaced with modern , fancy but inferior stuff. When clearing out one of the Club’s boat houses a while ago, we discovered some old and damaged rods. One was an 8 foot spinning rod from the 70’s. It had never been a top quality rod but did have a nice action and feel to it. I vaguely remembered the model from years gone by. This example had a damaged reel seat, was lacking a couple of line guides and the ferrule was hopelessly jammed. Unable to throw it in the skip, it lay in my shed for a few years . At some point I acquired a nice old Daiwa reel from the same era. It was also in poor order. A thorough clean and service and the addition of one or two donor parts had the old Daiwa purring. A loose plan was forming somewhere in my busy and fuddled head. I started attempting to separate the two pieces of the spinning rod. Various lubricants, temperatures, tools and brute strength were all applied, to no avail. Replacing the ferrules would have been more than the rod was worth, and so I decided this old rod would be a one piece! I roughly whipped on a couple of recycled line guides and moved my attention to the damaged reel seat. It needed to be replaced basically- not a terribly difficult task but again beyond the time and resources I was willing to sacrifice. I still really wanted to cast this old rod and hopefully prove that it was still useful by catching with it. With the help of strong gaffer tape the reel seat held the old Daiwa securely and so when I decided to have a pollock sortie last week , the 8ft ‘one piece combo’ was squeezed into the car.
With an old 1 oz Abu Koster attached the outfit cast really well and the Daiwa was smooth and robust. I hit into some fish for a short period but landed only one from the difficult and high rocky perch I was on, a fine fish of just over 3lbs.
I have several really decent spinning outfits. This rough and ready addition however did the job and was really absolutely fine to use. Point made, (to myself at least), I think I’ll keep it for mackerel bashing in the summer.
A.T.F.
Argyll Trout Fisher 