Here’s Chris Yates with his B. James Avocet.
I took this picture of Chris and a nice Avon barbel in the mid-nineties. Mad keen, he was.
Time passes and things change. If you’d like to buy his Avocet, please read on.
Chris Yates models Versace.
I noticed a change in Chris at the 2001 National Angling Exhibition. He kept on about Dolce & Gabbana and the big fashion houses, especially the Italians ones.
Since then, he’s abandoned the fickle world of haute couture. Nowadays, his attention is focused on Hen Harriers. He’s not completely obsessed, the way he was with gudgeon, but he really likes them.
Chris and I have been friends since the late eighties. Says he trusts me. A while ago, he told me he wanted to spend more time with birds. No harm in that. Would I, he asked, be prepared to offer his fishing tackle to my highly refined clientele? Of course I would, so I am. The Chris Yates Collection has its own section within my website. You can find it by clicking here.
Readers will be relieved to know that I do not use the term ‘curate’ (I’m not a complete onanist) so I am not curating Chris Yates’s fishing tackle, I’m offering it for sale on his behalf so that he can concentrate on other passions: Hen Harriers, aiming for a Triple Crackpot and financing the purchase of a new bathyscaphe (he’s got his eye on the MK II Hirstian Sphere).
Here’s Chris’s Avocet.
Please click image for more information.
A unique opportunity to own Chris Yates’s storied B. James Avocet.
How about Chris’s MK II Bishop carp rod?
Please click image for more information.
AKA The Pope Joan. The only carp rod to be named after a record carp, a chess piece and a mythical medieval Popess.
He says it’s seven and a half inches long.
Please click image for more information.
That’s right, Chris Yates’s Tonkin bamboo float case, which we made for him in 1996, takes floats up to 7½” long.
There’s a good story behind the float case. Indeed, the history and provenance of Chris’s fishing tackle is by turns impressive, solemn, romantic, and mostly legal. Each item has been carefully examined, appraised and sensitively attended to where necessary. Chris has written a letter of provenance for each piece on Golden Scale Club headed paper.
As well as the Avocet, the Pope Joan and the float case, visit my website to view Chris’s centre pin reels, Hardy Altex, carp net, tackle box, fly rods and reels, and other rods.
With best wishes from Edward Barder and Colin Whitehouse.