What's your oldest fishing gear in operation?

[Little_Flatty]

Hi all,

What's your oldest piece of fishing equipment still in operation?

Mine is a Sigma Whisker Titan which I bought second hand from Ray at Anglers World North Rocks whilst I was still in high school (I'm nearly 40 now). I actually have no idea how old it is, but I suspect it might be at least 20 years old. It's spooled with 1kg mono and has been my go-to reel for stalking whiting with bait on the flats. It's a positively tiny reel (equivalent to a 500 size these days?) and has a beautifully smooth drag.

I have a big collection of higher tech gear but I keep coming back to this reel, mostly because my other outfits are spooled with braid and I like the simplicity of mono all the way through when bait fishing.

It hasn't seen much use this summer as most of my favourite flats are on the Northern Beaches, but hopefully it will get a few outings later this summer.

I'm guessing there are a few alveys and centrepins out there amongst us raiders. Show us your old gear!

Mike

[Rey05]

my back and knees.... while they are the same age as the rest of my body which I use for fishing, they definitely feel the oldest. 

[bluefin]

I have rods and reels going back 50 or more years. Mitchell reels would be my oldest. I used as a boy. A couple of hand reels I used as a kid, Alvey and seascape reels and rods from my late teens. Butterworth Alvey 7144 and spin 8144. Shimano Bantam 100 ?   and an ugly stick baitcaster.  I get them out for a bit of fun now and then. The 8144 is so heavy. But at 20 Years old and nothing better around, It was perfect !!     The Bantam I used on a newer rod last week !  4lb Braid now instead of mono !!

Edited January 10, 2021 by bluefin

[noelm]

I still use a Titan Whisker on my Whiting rod, pretty good reel at the time and still goes OK, got an ABU bait caster that is decades old and I dig it out now and then on "special" occasions, had a couple of Mitchel threadlines that were everyday reels, but they were stolen years ago, but probably still being used somewhere.

[rickmarlin62]

Two  30 plus yrs old spinfishers  a 7ft ugly stik  and an ft70  my fave snapper sticks   they catch most of my reds

Edited January 10, 2021 by rickmarlin62

[wazatherfisherman]

I  have the predecessor 500 size, it's a Shakespeare 2499. I bought several of the same range starting with the "Blue" series then red series, then green. Fantastic reels bought in 1978-79, still work as good as new. The 2499 is my favourite reel of the collection I have.

Still have a Jarvis Walker "Burnie De Luxe" solid glass Bream rod that I fought a Marlin on for about 3 minutes- it's a 5 ft 2 piece rod that joins just above the butt. Occasionally gets a run, but more of a "loaner" these days for heavy handed friends!

Still using the same 600A5 Alvey I originally bought in 1975- have to be my most used reel of all and still works great, just a little faded

[Little_Flatty]

18 hours ago, wazatherfisherman said:

I  have the predecessor 500 size, it's a Shakespeare 2499. I bought several of the same range starting with the "Blue" series then red series, then green. Fantastic reels bought in 1978-79, still work as good as new. The 2499 is my favourite reel of the collection I have.

Still have a Jarvis Walker "Burnie De Luxe" solid glass Bream rod that I fought a Marlin on for about 3 minutes- it's a 5 ft 2 piece rod that joins just above the butt. Occasionally gets a run, but more of a "loaner" these days for heavy handed friends!

Still using the same 600A5 Alvey I originally bought in 1975- have to be my most used reel of all and still works great, just a little faded

Marlin on a bream rod? Is there a Waza epic tale to be told? I would love to hear it!  

Great to see some old gear still doing the rounds on raiders’ boats.

[wazatherfisherman]

57 minutes ago, Little_Flatty said:

Marlin on a bream rod? Is there a Waza epic tale to be told? I would love to hear it!  

Great to see some old gear still doing the rounds on raiders’ boats.

Hi Mike not much of an epic tale, we had been catching heaps of small Kings trolling around Jibbon Bombie. They'd been on the surface every day for a few weeks and we'd been catching them by trolling either white feathers or tiny coloured octopus skirts around 2 inches long. Most would have been undersize these days but in 1980 (I think it was then!) there was neither a size or bag limit and as it was two days before Christmas and everybody had rello's coming for Christmas we decided to go get some more to give to family etc.

When you troll for them with smaller lures especially skirts, they quite often go "off" a colour like someone has turned the off button- they usually respond to another colour though, so the night before we left I made my own "daisy-chain" of about 5 different coloured 2 inch occies with a small white feather jig on the end (for a bit of weight!) The lures were only about 1 ft apart from each other on the "chain".

To make it fun with the small fish, I put a small baitcaster on the old Bernie De Luxe with 12 lb line and the next morning  we started trolling as soon as we were rounding the point of Jibbon. Birds everywhere, just as it had been for the last few weeks, but instead of the mass schools of small Kings, the fish the birds were on were really small Stripey's only around 2-3 lb, not a Kingfish in sight.

We started getting them straight away and after getting a few, decided I'd try the daisy chain to see if I could get a couple at once. Hadn't gone more than about 100 mtr's after tying on the chain and the reel starts screaming and a really small Black Marlin starts tail-walking. Had it on for about 3 minutes before it jumped off.

Then we see 2 more Marlin free jumping, so the old rod gets put away and the 20 lb outfits come out with bigger feather lures- that's all we had with us, hadn't expected to see anything like a Marlin only a couple of hundred meters out from Port Hacking entrance.

To cut a long story short, I hooked and lost 4 more Marlin, including one that was only hooked for a couple of seconds, before following the lure almost right to the back of the boat and taking it a second time right in front of us. Again it jumped off- in hindsight we realised we were going too slow to get an effective hook-up.

We then decided to put a Stripey out live and had a couple slashed before we could get them in, until finally getting one in intact. A hasty rigging of about 8 ft of 100lb line behind a swivel and a 9/0 hook on Bernie W's Jig King trolling rod and the Stripey was hooked through the top jaw and sent back over. Only took about a minute of trolling and a Marlin was dancing on the surface. 

That fish towed us almost out of sight of land and we had it close to the boat plenty of times, but finally lost it after nearly 4 hours, when Bernie who'd been on the rod without a harness decided to do the drag up just that bit more in a last ditch attempt to get it close enough to gaff and the line parted with the fish basically just sinking away. 

Inexperience by us all on the day lost the fish, plus the fact that the leader was far too short and we just couldn't reach it to drag the Marlin over that last bit. Felt sad that it was probably too exhausted to survive as it had gone a real brown colour towards the end. Top effort by Bernie though on 20 lb line, but he was asleep on the floor within about 2 minutes after losing the fish. 

Have never seen so many Marlin as we saw that day and so close in. Went back out the next day and the big schools of Stripeys were gone, the water not as blue and the rat Kings were abundant again.

[savit]

I used regularly small road/building rocks (Google says average age 500-600 mln years 😀)  as  paternoster sinkers when targetting smaller species in really snaggy areas (1 cast - 1 sinker) with strong  current near rock ledges. Unlike lead -  it has zero impact both on the environment and wallet. I still keep bag of them, wife sometimes uses them for her plants projects.

Besides that - Steelite bakelite centerpin (late 50s - early 60s) serves as a luderick reel, and Daiwa Silver Series 1300c (mid 70s- early 80s) spin reel -  as a small / bread and butter species kayak reel. Unlike others / modern graphite reels it just refuses to give up after swims.