Fishing tackle

ATG’s weekly selection of items that caught bidders’ eyes includes a rare Victorian fishing reel that made over 10-times estimate in Dorset.

Now in its 12th year, the annual 40-dealer National Vintage Fishing Tackle Fair is increasingly attracting visitors, some from Germany, Italy and Denmark, to have their vintage tackle valued by dealers, particularly by Neil Freeman of event sponsors Angling Auctions.

IT was the finest UK collection of antique fishing tackle to come to auction for a decade and it arrived via an unusual route.

Here’s one that didn’t get away. A major collection of antique fishing tackle comes to auction at Moore Allen & Innocent’s Cirencester saleroom on March 11 via an unusual route.

Valued at £1500-2000, a signed first issue of William Blacker’s The Art of Angling..., printed in 1842 in Edinburgh by Anderson & Bryce and containing 31 trout flies and a single salmon fly attached with decorative coloured paper seals (see illustration top right) but lacking the single plate, was bid to £22,000 (Head).

“IN my 30 years in the business I’ve not seen anything like this before,” said Neil Freeman, of Angling Auctions. “I’ve checked everywhere, but I can’t find anything like it.”

THE first day of the March 13-14 angling sale held by Mullock Madeley at Ludlow Racecourse was devoted to the literature of the sport. Seen right is one of two complete runs of The Creel from the years 1963-67 that sold at £200 and £210. A set of all bar one of the ...How to Catch Them series, all in dust jackets and all bar the Pike book first editions, sold at £460.

Historians of the craft of fish carving currently believe that the Scotsman John B. Russell (1819/20-1893) was the first professional maker of such models. Working with carver John Tully at the Fochabers Studio, which made models for Farlow & Co. into the 1930s, Russell is known to have been producing these fine trophies from around 1880, although the early date to the example pictured here suggests some rewriting of the literature might be required.

UK: POOR old Neville Chamberlain. He always takes the blame for all but delivering up the British people to Adolf Hitler, when perhaps he should really be seen merely as one of those Edwardian throwbacks like Eden who believed, quite rightly, that there was no aspect of a fascist dictatorship which could threaten the lifestyle of the English upper classes.

UK: AS yet there are no signs that game fishing is to become an endangered sport to follow hunting and shooting, not that the market for angling collectables is floundering on the bank of public indifference.