Friday, August 24, 2007

Review: September 2007 The Reel News

The mailbox delivered the latest edition of The Reel News (Vol. XVII, No. 5--September 2007), and like always, it is a winner.

This issue sees the return of Steve Vernon's pioneering work Roots o' Reels on the origins of the fishing reel. Vol. 13 in this ongoing series is entitled "A Small Revelation" and is co-authored with Randy Heller, and is the second in the series dealing with the very odd and important Ed. F. Small spinning reel patent. Copiously illustrated and dead-on historically, like all of Steve's work, this is a significant contribution to our knowledge of reel history.

Jim Madden unveils "The South Bend Treasure Chest" in his South Bend Bits column. This article covers the introduction in 1951 of Freecast and Smoothcast model casting reels and their unique cases.

Bob Miller's Pflueger Pfacts column is a bit different this month, in that it is an essay entitled "On Collecting Pflueger Reels." This is an absolute must read for anyone thinking of starting a Pflueger reel collection, or who seeks to expand their Pflueger reel collection in new directions.

Stu Lawson's always entertaining More Reel Stuff column features a report on the Kelso Show as well as a very cool article about fishing with three of his granddaughters.

Ben Wright illustrates the difference beween the original and reproduction ABU Cardinal 33 CDL in his fine Spinning Lines column. Another must read that may just help you from making a several hundred dollar mistake.

Jim Schottenham's always interesting The Auction Report covers the best of the past two months, and includes some real wowzers including a 4/0 E. vom Hofe Pasque and case that sold for $999.90. Col. Milton Lorenz' "The Reel Fix" covers the durable Bronson Jet 500 spinning reel, while Ed Slane contributed a short piece entitled "Smokey Makes Our Day" about an incident involving a cop, a shirt, and a tackle box full of reels.

My personal contributions included two articles, a short Reels of the Trade column entitled "The Mysterious Metropolitan Hardware Company of N.Y.C." which covers the trade reels from this firm. After it had already gone to press, I discovered that Al Munger had referenced a reel from this company back in 1980, so these trade reels have been a mystery for some time.

The second article was entitled "The 99th American Casting Association National Tournament" and covered in a bit more detail the casting tournament I wrote about this week in the blog.

Another fine issue with tons of info simply not found anywhere else. The Reel News is edited by Richard K. Lodge and is available to ORCA members six times a year. Clicking Here.

-- Dr. Todd

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