All Hail the Plastic Nylon Line Spool!

All Hail the Plastic Nylon Line Spool!

My forthcoming article in the next NFLCC Magazine focuses on the nylon and monofilament fishing line revolution. Coinciding with this was the movement from wooden/bakelite line spools to plastic line spools. I refer to them as "Nylon" spools to differentiate them from "Monofilament" spools (mono being a single extruded filament of nylon).

I inundated poor Dudley Murphy with hundreds of photos for this article, which he had to wade through. This meant some pics had to be left out. Here are some that I wasn't able to even scan for the article:


(Left) J.C. Penney's spool; (Right) Sears J.C. Higgins spool.

(Left) Belknap Hardware, Louisville; (Right), Missouri's Stowe Hardware Co. spool.

(Left) Summerlee Hardware spool; (Right) W. Bingham "Pikie" spool.

Two Pflueger plastic line spools.

Two Horrocks-Ibbotson plastic line spools.

A pair of unknown plastic line spools.

I did take a lot of time to scan of a bunch of nylon line spools; alas, the format of the magazine required this image be scaled down. I worked hard on this so I wanted people to see how cool looking these spools could be. Here is the one for the Nylon Line Spools:



I did the same thing for monofilament spools. We don't tend to think of monofilament line spools as being collectable, but a nice accumulation of them is actually a pretty display:




Click either of the images to see them in their full color glory.

You'll have to wait a few weeks for the magazine to arrive and learn the history behind the nylon and mono line spool, but until then, enjoy looking!

-- Dr. Todd