A Very Moral Fishing Rod

Yesterday we went to my favourite fishery, as we often do on a Sunday. It’s run by some very good friends and aside from the chance to visit them, there’s always the opportunity for a bit of fishing.

As usual I picked up my “go to” rod, a custom rebuilt South Bend 359. The original rod had been an 8’ 6’’ but in being rebuilt, by a very skilled craftsman in the Ile De France, it had been reduced to just 8’ 3’’.  The 359 hails from Wes Jordan’s tenure as workshop manager at South Bend, and is rated as a dry fly rod. Actually, if you even try to cast a weighted fly with it, the cast just collapses in a heap as the rod seems to lose all of its “spring”.

As usual there was a westerly blowing, not a strong one, but enough to ruffle most of the small two acre loch I prefer. However, there’s always a sheltered spot at the top of the water where the outfall from two springs enters the loch, - usually a good place for holding fish in any conditions. As there was nothing showing on the surface, I decided to fish a couple of wets, a damsel nymph (un-weighted of course) on the point and an orange bodied PTN on a dropper. The PTN makes sense because of the large number of shrimp in the water, many of which carry the bright orange parasite that makes such a good “hot spot” for feeding fish. Well, I should have known better. Although the rod cast as reliably as ever, within a few minutes I had a complete rat’s nest at the end of the line, and had no choice but to send 15 feet of fluorocarbon into the nearest bin. Undeterred, I made up a duplicate task and set about fan casting to search the water in front of me. About ten casts later and I knew the flies weren’t swimming correctly – another macramé special in the leader, and another 15 feet of nylon in the bin. Maybe my trusted 359 was trying to tell me something…..

Clearly I had been judged and found wanting! I sat down, lit my pipe and unfurled the tapered dry fly cast that lives in the pocket of my vest, tied on a small hopper, and carried on. I wasn’t at all surprised to find myself fishing on for the next hour without the slightest tangle. There were a few rising fish by this time, but then the wind backed into the North West and stirred up a real ruckus on the surface, - no trout however far sighted was going to see a fly in that. I wish that I could tell you that my rediscovered virtue was rewarded with a fish on the bank, but sadly not this week.  I did see a heron fly over though..

Malloch's Centre Brake Anatomy

Well now, that wasa bit of a break - suffice it to say it has been an interesting year since my last posting, so let's leave it at that shall we...

Around the turn of the Twentieth century, a lot of reel makers and retailers were experimenting with ways of supplementing the various pawl-based check mechanisms in use, - usually with some sort of continuously adjustable drag, often referred to at the time as a "centre brake" Malloch of Perth made a significant contribution with their patented example. This is a partial re-post of an article I put up on the Classic Fly Rod Forum earlier this year...

I recently acquired this example of one of these reels that has been “in the wars” a bit. The foot has been clumsily filed with attendant file marks to the shoulders of the reel, and, worse still, the calliper check has at some point been drilled out, leaving a nasty hole in the back plate. However, you don’t see many of these, and it’s still a handsome reel. I wanted to see how much damage had been done to the check, and give the reel a bit of a clean up, so I thought I’d bite the bullet and dismount the spool as well.

Here’s what I found:

This is the view from the top of the spool, once it has been dismounted from the frame. The screw holes receive fixing screws that locate right through the winding plate and the visible half of the brake mechanism. Incidentally, notice the artisan mark XI on the edge of the spool.

Here’s the top of the winding plate showing the corresponding screw holes.

The brake mechanism itself is in three parts:

The familiar rotating drag adjustment that can be seen on the front of the reel. This conceals a bronze wedge, advance on a left hand thread by the rotation of the adjustment knob:

The second element is mounted on the top of the spool…..

…..in the form of a quite massive bronze bearing. Notice the groove with the bronze wire sitting in it? This is the active part of the brake. Turning the adjuster knob drives the wedge down into the bearing where it pushes two shaped bronze springs outwards to engage the inside face of a bronze bush set into the reel face plate.

You can clearly see the groove worn by the springs in the sleeve.

Here’s a sketch of how it all fits together:

I have left out the winding plate and the two fixing screws to try and make it a bit clearer.

Putting it all back together is fiddly. At one point one of the brake springs was dislodged – they are quite tricky to relocate. The other thing to ensure is the alignment of the wedge, with the wedge faces perpendicular to the screw holes, - and the final challenge is lining up all three sets of holes to allow the final fixing screws to be put in.

I hope this is a helpful little exploration. I don’t know if the actual manufacturer of this model has been pinned down, but there are Reuben Heaton style artisan marks on all the major components, the drilled spool spindle and the exposed rear bearing is similar to a lot of other Heaton reels I have seen.