Trotting Rods

Followers of my blog will know that most of my coarse fishing gear is vintage late 70's early 80's. This period was when angling really captured my imagination and I would daydream the week away at school thinking of such venues as the River Derwent at Borrowash or Findern Pond. I still find myself doing this at work. These were the days before the carp explosion and prior to anglers really targetting barbel on the local rivers in the numbers seen today. There were very few if any commercial fisheries in south Derbys so all the matches were fished on running water. So tackle then seemed to be dominated by the match scene and the Shakespeare Alpha was one of the 'hot' rods. A couple of years back I found one for an absolute song and it has served me well since. My float fishing on running water is now mostly confined to trotting the stream for grayling in the winter. I have had some good fun with the Alpha matched with either a centre pin or a Mitchell 440A.
There were two rods that I remember from this era that were considered to be a cut above. They were the Hardy Matchmaker and the Bruce & Walker. Recently I was lucky enough to find a Bruce and Walker on ebay. I won the auction and the rod was not too far from me at Heanor. This morning I drove over to pick it up and I'm really pleased with it, the model is a Flyer 12L. Hopefully I'll get to give it a go before Xmas but fishing trips seem to be at a premium in the run up. If there is a big thaw this week the rivers are likely to be up but it will give me something to ponder whilst trying to concentrate on work.