Chris Yates’s Hardy Eureka 3½” centre pin reel.
As seen on the cover if Waterlog issues 12 & 19. SOLD
£500.00
I’m not sure if the measurement 3½” really warrants the exclamation ‘Eureka!’ but still, this is a lovely reel that Chris used with genuine pleasure.
Like so many of Walker’s disciples, the young Chris Yates had seen pictures of his hero with a bag of two pound roach, his Hardy Eureka clearly visible. Chris tells us that he wanted one straight away but had to wait for many years before his wish was fulfilled.
This makes Chris’s life sound like some sort of perpetual Christmas which in a way, it is. One day, the postman braved the snow, elves, reindeer and stray tinsel to deliver a brown parcel containing this reel, a gift from an admirer who had given up fishing for, in Chris’s words, another religion.
The accompanying illustration shows the reel on the cover of Waterlog № 12 with a large grayling. Chris used the reel for grayling, roach and dace fishing on the Stour and Nadder. A perfect choice, paired as it is in the picture with his Merlin rod.
Apart from a small patch of light corrosion to the enamel finish on one edge of the reel’s back plate, it’s in superb original condition.
The reel is in its original Hardy box and comes with a letter of provenance Chris has written on Golden Scale Club headed paper.