Jonathan Savory looks at carp anglers’ passion for collecting tackle, and considers that most iconic of vintage rods: the B. James & Son Mk IV…

HARDWARE

ROD COLLECTOR

1. WALKER’S MK IV NO.1, PICTURED SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE MATCHING MK IV ROD HE MADE FOR BB

2. TWO EXAMPLES OF THE VERY FIRST BATCH OF COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE CARP RODS EVER PRODUCED. THESE LEFT AN ENDURING LEGACY, AND ARE AS RARE AS HEN’S TEETH!

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HY DID THE COLLECTOR cross the road? The short answer that I don’t know, but they were probably in search of a holy grail of some kind. Either that, or they needed to get to their psychologist’s appointment. As anglers, we are all collectors of sorts, and are all after our own personal holy grail. No matter whether we’re collecting fantastic captures, unforgettable memories, beautiful sunrises, rods, reels, bite alarms, bobbins, or combinations of everything, we’re still collectors, and some of us get utterly obsessive about it.

What drives it? Goodness knows. It certainly isn’t much to do with common sense! Here I sit in my man cave (I hate that term, but it’s an uncomfortable truth), surrounded by rods, reels, paintings, floats, prints, monkey climbers, books, fishing-related CDs(!), vintage baskets and bags, bite alarms, magazines; it goes on. The floats have spilled into the kitchen. The reels have spilled everywhere. The rods stand sentinel, peering at me, disdainfully. I haven’t started on stuffed fish (yet), but to do so may herald a death knell, rung by my other obsession that is the beautiful Rachel.

There, I mentioned her; maybe that’ll earn me a stuffed pike? Just a small one.

This addiction occupies more of my time than fishing does, but it holds me so firm, that I doubt I’ll ever escape its grasp. Thankfully, I’m in good company. Try explaining to a non-angler why we so passionately pursue a fish, to simply let it go. Most will shrug; they’ve heard it all before, and no matter how many more times we repeat ourselves, they’ll never get it. Try explaining a collector’s mentality to an angler, though, and most will get it. Why? Because, as I said, we’re all collectors, some more than others. Me? Well, I gave up resisting it a long while ago. I’m a lost cause. Show me a ten-foot, two-piece split cane and I’m a quivering wreck.

More of a man in the face of such encounters is my good friend, Chris Sandford. Has he always been so stoic? Well, he’s been collecting a good few more years than I have, and I’m sure, that prior to his maturing into a wise and considered collecting type, at one time he chomped every bit as I do to ‘get it bought’. Indeed, only recently, he revealed the fact. A very rare and early MK IV carp rod had become available, one of the first batch. They made only around 20 of those, way back in 1952… the holy grail! “Get it bought!” said Chris, “we mustn’t let it get away… who knows where it might end up!”