#allcocks

As the clock turns the midnight hour another coarse fishing season on our rivers will get underway. Many I am sure have spent the day dusting down the rod bags, piling reels and finding all that terminal tackle that thrown into the bag on the last hour of last day to fish in March. It has been a while since I wrote about my fishing adventures and days out searching for vintage tackle. The winter…

I recently acquired a bottom rod, The Stort, made by Chapman of Ware, a producer of fine cane rods since 1957. The workshop in Bowling Road in Ware, Hertfordshire finally shut in 2016. The Stort was one of a range of coarse rods that were made, the more widely know were the Chapman 500 and 550 Deluxe 2 piece Avon rods and the Dennis Pye 700 3 piece Pike Rod. There were a couple of other bottom…