Chris Yates’s Allcocks Match Aerial.

Fellow Golden Scale Club member David Foley, aka  Phineus, gave Chris this Match Aerial on the day of his departure for a new life on the Continent. He’d had a panel fitted to the inside of the reel’s back plate engraved with the following:

To C. Yates

With The

Utmost Admiration

D. Foley

At the peak of his perch fishing phase, Chris used this very reel for his Dorset Stour fishing. Hugh Miles once filmed him making a great catch of 2 lbs + perch from the river whilst using it.

One can see where Chris’s index finger has worn the paint on the spool’s inner flange. This is something we all do to Match Aerials. For some reason, they’re really nice to wind this way, rather than using the handles when retrieving a float. There is an extraneous hole in the back plate that almost certainly had something to do with a line guard. Chris does not like line guards on Aerials, so it was doubtless removed.

Aside from these slight yet charming cosmetic imperfections, the reel is in super condition mechanically and cosmetically.

They’re nice reels, Match Aerials, and excellent to fish with. They’re very well made and practical. Everyone should have one.

The reel comes in its original Allcocks box with a letter of provenance from Chris written on Golden Scale Club headed paper.