The Literary Fly Fisher

Founding editor of Esquire and avid fly fisher Arnold Gingrich compared his “fine reels for trout and salmon” to jewels (1966, 277).  In his book, The Well-Tempered Angler, he wrote: “You’ll find yourself acquiring reels first because you need them, second because you enjoy them enough, as objects interesting in themselves, to start fooling and fussing with them, oiling them and greasing them, and wiping them with gun cloths, and indulging in a certain amount of fondling them, and almost without realizing it you wake up to the fact that you’re collecting them, and that you have, indeed, quite a collection.” (Gingrich 1966, 277). 

For good or ill, probably the latter, I have to admit that I feel much as Gingrich does.  I am not a major reel collector, but I do have more than I need.  One of my favorites is my “Single Spey” reel, made by Tim Pantzlaff of The Spey Company.

Tim has released a short video of his reels in action.  His benchmade reels are of very high quality, and the prices he asks for them are very reasonable.  Tim offers one reel–the Single Spey–in a 3 inch trout size and several in Spey fishing sizes.  He also offers rods and materials for tying tube flies. 

You can check out the reel that Tim made for me, and which he custom ported, on the Single Spey page of his website.  Having fished this reel a fair amount, I can strongly recommend Tim’s work.  Moreover, he simply a nice guy. So, if you’re in the market for a high quality, plate-wind reel, be sure to check out Tim’s video.  You’ll find that his reels really are jewels. 

And speaking of reels and jewels, wait until you see the Perfect that Hardy has made to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee….

This entry was posted on January 17, 2012 at 5:00 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.