Small old reel

[guinea]

About 30 years ago, my ol' man found this little reel in the bottom of a lake. All we could find for markings was either 25 or 2.5.





He wanted to add the fish he found in a creel years ago. It has since been poly'ed and is now a museum display lol.

Anyone ever see one of these? It once had a wooden handle, but broke off.

[Hickgtx600f4]

That's a pretty neat find Guinea. quite a neat looking Mummy there also.
its hard to believe what you can find on the bottom of the lake.

[56987]

Thats really cool Guinea!
Is that mummy fish a trout?

Looks like the reel is the correct size for an ice fishing set up.

[guinea]

Yep, that's a mummified brook trout.

We figured icefishing, too. It's just so tiny, I can't see that some guy with big hands would have an easy time reeling that thing in lol.

[surflizard]

Awesome find Guinea, it looks to be a South Bend F25 inline reel made in the 20s ! Nice Mummified Twout ya got there !

[steven girard]

Cool!

[guinea]

Surf, next time I have my laptop and I see Stewy I'll show him this!

After I posted, he informed me that the lake he found it in used to be just a small river until they flooded it out to make Goose Pond (Canaan). I wonder if it was used for river fishing, or after the flooding. Hmmmmm, some research is in order I guess! Maybe tomorrow.

[surflizard]

When they are that old it can be a real bugger to track down make and model. During the roaring 20s. fishing really took off and everyone cashed in on fishing gear ! A lot of the steel mills guys started pumping out lots of small stampings, the side plates used a universal die and 3 screws later you had a fishing reel !

[guinea]

If it was a "brand name", the rust has covered up any markings. It actually turns smoothly for the shape it's in, though!

Our biggest wonder was what would you do with such a small reel? Even modern icefishing reels are much bigger. It just seems like for the size, reeling in would be 10 turns to pull 6" of line back in.......so I wondered, would they have handlined back in when catching a fish? Stewy said it's probably for catching jack smelt.

[surflizard]

Stewy could be right on the money, they did have jack smelt rigs back then ! Seen a couple 36" poles made from bamboo, they used to use a multi hook rig that is the great grandfather of the Sabuki rigs made nowadays !