Antique tackle collectors: Packrats and Historians
Hobbyists with an obsessive taste for fly fishing treasures from the past are helping to preserve the craft and history of our sport
by Steve Woit – Monday, Mar 23rd, 2020
Collectors of antique fly fishing tackle are a unique breed. Motivated by a passion for the sport and the excitement of the chase, they often search and compete for decades to acquire a single object of desire.
In doing so, they help preserve the craft and history of fly fishing history one rod, reel or fly at a time. Some have gained celebrity in the fly fishing community, reaching the status of elders in the tribe.
Take Hoagy Carmichael, the son of the famous musician and composer of Stardust Memories, who grew up fishing and playing with Hollywood actors like Clark Gable. Hoagy apprenticed to the legendary bamboo fly rod maker Everett Garrison, and made over 100 fine fly rods, which are now collector’s items selling for thousands of dollars apiece.
Carmichael’s book A Master’s Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod inspired an entire generation of fly fishers to try their hand at crafting their own rods. He purchased all of Garrison’s workshop from his estate and the master rodmaker’s workbench and tools are now enshrined in the Catskills Fly Fishing Center and Museum in Livingston Manor, New York.
When I first met Hoagy, he was working around an antique tackle show in Boxborough, Massachusetts with a deerskin bag, from which he pulled out a massive antique Philbrook and Paine salmon reel. I asked him if the reel was for sale, to which he replied: “I suppose.” “Well, how much?” “About $15,000 would do it,” was his reply.
