January 23, 2020

The Good Old Days

The Anglers Mail this week (21/1/20) caused a minor storm by highlighting my wedding to Enoka at Christmas.  It was the quietest affair possible so I hurried to tell friends that they had not been ignored, simply we’d been trying to keep things low key. At my age, not Enoka’s, that is surely the way to go about it? But this is not the point of this blog.

wife fishing

What is interesting is Enoka’s liking for a pin. I am NOT going to pretend that Enoka is fanatically fishing the winter through or spends hours concocting bait recipes. Not a bit of it BUT she does enjoy a maximum of three hours IF she knows there is a big chance of catching something. One fish will do, providing it needs a net to be landed. And what is also key is that given a choice, she will always opt for the rod with the pin on it.

A pin just seems simpler and to make more sense, she says. Of course, this is only a reversion to the Old Days, Good or not. Back in the Fifties, Sixties even, every new angler was expected to learn on a pin and only graduate to a fixed spool reel after a long apprenticeship. Even the great Dick Walker wrote as much so it had to be true.

My own pins in the 1950s were dreadful affairs. Bakelite. 2 inch diameter. Bought for 25p and not worth that. But they did get me up, running and at home with the pin mentality. For a while in my twenties I thought the whole pin thing was fuddy duddy nonsense but I came back to them in my thirties and have remained an admirer ever since.

Of course, pins do not do everything to perfection but they marry (that word again) perfectly with a float and that, too, is what Enoka wants to fish with 90% of the time. Just like we all did back in the good old days too. What goes around eh?