A blast from the past

Recently I had been thinking about my formative fly fishing years and for no particular reason recalled my first fly reel. We are going back a LONG way here, to around 1972 or so. It was my birthday and my parents bought me a fly rod and reel. That reel was a Roddy 320 and I simply loved it. To be perfectly honest it was the only one within my parent’s budget at that time but I didn’t care, it was a thing of beauty in my eyes. That reel served well for many seasons and helped me to land many, many trout. I replaced the faithful teal blue reel with a Rimfly at some point but kept using right up until it was stolen along with most of my other tackle not long before I departed Aberdeen. By the way, I don’t really believe all that ‘forgive and forget’ nonsense when it comes to common thieves, I still fervently hope the scum that stole my fishing gear is slowly roasting in hell.

Many of you will not be familiar with that long forgotten brand. At first glance it was easy to mistake the blue and grey Roddy for a Hardy Princess. That was because it was a cheap knock-off of the legendary reel made the lads in Alnwick. Back in those days it was the Japanese and not the Chinese who found ways around patents and mass produced imitations of western brands. Any thoughts this was an inferior reel need to be put to bed though, the old Roddy was a very well built reel for that time. Being manufactured in Japan meant it was strong and made to last. That classic design was simple and aside from wear on the check there was little to go wrong. In use, the drag was nothing to write home about, but then you could say the same about the Princess. I stand to be corrected here, but I think I read somewhere that the company who made the Roddy (Olympic) became Daiwa in later years. Their reels went under different names depending where they were sold. In the states they were branded Heddon for example.

Over the intervening years I have used a ridiculously large number of fly reels, some much better than others. I keep falling back on a few old reliables though and have given up on new designs. When I spotted a used Roddy for sale I decided to chance going back in time and bought it for a few quid. It is always a bit risky buying second-hand fishing gear and photos only tell you so much. This particular example had some obvious age related cosmetic wear but looked to be otherwise OK. It came with a spare spool and even the rather tired original cardboard box and instruction sheet. I figured if someone kept all the bits together for all this time the reel was probably looked after pretty well to. So a negligible amount of cash changed hands and the old reel became mine.

When I finally got my hands on the reel it was clear it had actually seen very little use. Grubby, yes, but otherwise it was in good order. The anodised surfaces showed some deterioration on the spools but the edges of the cage, usually chipped through time on the water, were very good. That distinctive teal blue back of the reel was much better than I had dared to hope when I parted with my twenty British pounds. OK so there is a scratch stretching across the back of the cage and some paint loss on the raised boss for the spindle but this is purely cosmetic. My guess is that this reel had been lying in a shed or some similar dusty environment by the look of it, but it had not been hard used.

Both spools would require a lot of effort to get them clean. Marks on them initially looked like chipped adonising but most of them were sticky residue which just required a bit of elbow grease to shift. More warm water and lots of rubbing began to pay off and, while still not perfect, it is all beginning to look a lot better.

Roddy’s look very old fashioned, what with their heavily ventilated spools laid out in three concentric rings of holes and its distinctive blue anodised cage. I personally think they are lovely in their simplicity. Spool removal is effected by pushing a little catch in the centre of the spool and then gently pulling it out. A dab of grease helps to keep this working smoothly. I had to change the direction of retrieve but that is the work of a few minutes. The triangular checks inside needed to be switched over. It was these checks which would decide if the reel was a good ‘un or not. Thankfully, the wear on them was minimal.

The main focus was simply on cleaning the cage up. It was filthy, with crud in every nook and cranny. Warm, soapy water and a toothbrush are where I start when cleaning up old reels and a bit of time was spent hunched over the workbench as I brushed the warm liquid into every corner. Rinsing with fresh water to remove the dirt and soapy bubbles, allowed me to check the moving parts in great detail before lubricating the necessary points . All too often I see reels smothered in thick grease, a grave mistake as far as I am concerned. Excess grease or oil attract abrasive dirt, so rather than preserving the reel by allowing all the moving parts to slide smoothly, the grease ends up as a sort of scouring agent

There was some very dodgy looking monofilament line on one spool and a completely useless brittle brown fly line on the other. Both were removed and disposed of. I have a couple of AFTM 6 lines lying around, so I will run them on to this reel. There is definitely an intermediate and I’m sure there is a floater kicking around too. With the narrow spool on this reel a size 6 and some backing is all you can reasonably expect to use.

My new acquisition is the 320 size but other sizes were available with the 340 being a better reel for seven weight lines. If the the 320 works out OK I might look around for other sizes. The second hand market usually has a steady flow of these reels, a testament to both how popular they were and their longevity.

So I am already fully armed and ready for the 2024 season (which seems SO far off right now). That this latest folly is simply the actions of an old man trying to recapture a tiny part of his youth is blatantly obvious. Maybe I will hate the Roddy in use, those rosy memories cruelly exposed as simple nostalgia. Or just maybe the reel will perform as I recall and the trout of lough Conn will pull against the weak and noisy drag of my 1960’s Japanese reel.

I bought another couple of old fly reels recently and I will post my thoughts and observations on them soon. Why this sudden need to add fly reels to my collection you may well ask? The answer is I have cleared out a few unused models during the summer. A total of 4 Hardy’s went before I sold a Greys which I never really got on with. I’ve gone back to my lifelong favourites like Leeda LC, System 2’s and the like. I’m now looking at my salmon reels and asking myself if I should clear them out too! All of this is part of a much bigger picture as I approach retirement. That is is now planned to be a scant few months away, but life will look very different if I make it to 65 and cease ‘conventional’ paid employment (for good this time). Lots of days on the water will mean switching between my 5, 6 and 7 weight rods so there is a level of justification for buying all these old reels.