Retro Penn Pal.
Thinking they was doing me a favour, someone gave me a couple of old fishing reels recently which looked as though would have been better off going straight in to the dust bin if the truth be known. But, driven by nostalgia, one in particular caught my eye. An old battered and corroded little Penn 180 of the type I remember from way back when along with the Mitchell 624 and 602AP, both of which I still see in use from time to time out on the boats. The 624 in particular, which on account of its rugged simplicity with so few actual working parts, had virtually nothing to it that could go wrong, hence its longevity. The older Penn's fit the same basic design criteria. So rather than bin it I decided to strip the thing down, get rid of the built ups of salt and corrosion, treat it to a full service, then give it a run out to see if was still up to the job.
My first thought had been to do a video looking at the Penn, along with my favourite antique ree, the ABU Ambassaduer 12 which I have two of and still use regularly, plus an immaculate Alvey Sidecast for the uptide fishing, which in my opinion is a much under-rated design. I even went to the trouble to filming all the restoration work ready to tag it on to some actual fishing footage, and maybe I should press on and complete that task at some stage. But for the moment, the little old Penn will have to be content with this article. So, sticking to the authentic full retro theme, I loaded it up with 12 lbs bs mono, which was no great hardship as I prefer mono to braid in shallow water any way, paired it up with one of my old cork handled Pike spinning rods, and attached a wired three boomed paternoster to the end of the line. I even dug out an old fishing jacket which I regularly used back in the 1970's. But that is where the connection with the past most certainly ends.
So Charlie Pitchers and I turned up at Cleveleys where the Wyre Boat Angling Club have their slip and tractor compound on a glorious June morning. Because of family commitments later in the day, we decided on an early start fishing the flood tide up to high-water which was just after lunch. Not unexpectedly then, the tractors were not already out on the beach, though if I'm honest, it's rare to see anybody else out there fishing anyway these days. Good tides; good weather, and good fish about. So where is everyone. It's like having a club all to ourselves, which isn't a problem for us, though not a good omen for angling generally in the future. But that's another story for another time. So with the tractors out and with Charlie walking ahead because of the way the beach has developed some soft muddy holes recently, we were away down to low water ready for the off.
Despite the sunshine and quite a decent forecast, conditions were not exactly as expected. Quite a fresh north westerly breeze had got up which looked likely to be made worst later in the session as onshore sea breezes kicked in due to the land heating quicker than the water, drawing in replacement air from over the sea. A case then of making the most of what we had in the knowledge that we might have to cut things short and head in before high water, or struggle getting the boat back onto the trailer taking a battering in the process if we let the water get too far up. So, having been out a couple of days previously with Andy Bradbury aboard his Fleetwood based charter boat 'Blue Mink' when we'd had a burster on the Smoothhounds a couple of miles out off the Norbreck Castle Hotel, looking for a repeat, that was out chosen option for the day.
By this stage I hadn't used the retro outfit as I was planning to fish it with worm on the paternoster for flatties, which would simply have brought in yet more dogs. With the breeze getting ever stronger, and knowing we would very likely cut the trip short, a decision had to be taken and quickly as to whether we persevered or headed inshore to just beyond the low water mark to try for a few Plaice instead. The next brace of Dogs into the boat made our minds up for us. So it was inshore to grab an hour along the Cleveleys front where the retro gear would at least get a run out alongside the other rod baited with squid, just in case. On the pat were short lengths of blacklug tipped off with tiny pieces of squid, as much to keep the frozen worm in place as anything else. With hindsight, I don't think it would have mattered what we put as mayhem developed from the very moment the first baits touched down.
Our Warrior 175 has loads of room along the transom, so we always fish two rods apiece. But on this particular occasion we might have been better sticking to just the one. It was absolutely manic. A complete reversal of what had happened a few minutes earlier further off. From beginning to end, the four rods we had between us were constantly on the go, at times trying to climb out over the back of the boat to the point where you'd be playing one fish with your foot on the other rod to keep it from disappearing over the back. I say playing one fish, though on more than a couple of occasions it was two fish on the same trace at the same time, which when they're both decent Smoothhounds, or when it's on the retro outfit, was more than a test for any tackle, new or old.
It wasn't only Smoothhounds. As expected, there were a few Dogs in there feeding too, though they hardly got a sniff in really as the Hounds repeatedly beat them to the baits. We'vetaken a few half decent Tope fishing in close here over the years, but not unfortunately this season – so far. No Huss either. But Charlie did pick up a small Thornback and we had plenty of Dabs. No Plaice though which was a bit of let down, particularly as they had been around in reasonable numbers recently. In fact, before I put the full retro outfit together for this trip, I had taken the little Penn reel out to this particular mark on a previous session to see how it might cope, and came up with the first Sole I've taken fishing the Fylde Coast in around 40 years. So a good result there. And now, with the Smoothhounds running off all over the show, it was proving its worth in other ways, providing yet more evidence that advances in technology are not always as important as durability and reliability, which some of these older reels had, and in this case still have in bucket loads.