Spitalfields

A mild January day at Spitalfields yesterday and the first proper market of the year, washed down with hot tea amongst good company including the pleasure of a visit from an old comrade and captor of a 26lb pike, Mr Andy Saunders.  A day also to celebrate everything that the market is and the stall has become, with a loud hailer of a piece on Mr. Paul Trynka's website 'Market People' where you can read about how I woke up one day and found myself as a dealer, alongside pieces on Mick Jenrick - Eel Evangelist and my good friend and mucker from the market Mr. Steve Sorrell - Distressed Seller.

Peeks of Holborn

Once upon a time in Arcadia, and especially on a Thursday, ladies and gentlemen venturing out on a January morning and finding Gamages rather busy would have proceeded along Holborn to Peeks who were situated in nearby Grays Inn Road.  There, they would have had a large variety of fishing tackle to look at including some rather splendid reels.

Although Grays Inn Road still exists and ladies and gentlemen are known to walk down it every day of the week, Peeks is no more, so if it is Vintage Fishing Tackle for the Soul that you are after you are advised to strike out a little further and visit me at my stall in Spitalfields Antiques Market where the door to another world is open on Thursdays only between the hours of a half past seven and three o'clock.  Thank-you.

In the Cellar under the House of Efgeeco

Yesterday, I found myself on the telephone once again to Mr. Harry Notley who had remembered more about the  Efgeeco Works in Balham Hill where he worked in the decade known as the 1960's.  'There was a caravan in the yard, where they kept all the lures and the spinners and underneath the main house a cellar where the  bait boxes were stored, there were hundreds of 'em.'

(Watercolour painted at The Social Market by the artist Pete Fowler)

Percy Wadham's Nature Baits

Found recently a small shoal of Percy Wadham's Nature Baits hailing from the place known as The Isle of Wight.

Lost Inside the Efgeeco Factory

On Saturday evening I found myself on the telephone to a Mr. Harry Notley who worked at Efgeeco between 1962 and 1964 and later fished for Arding and Hobbs with John Richardson.  During our conversation Harry walked me through the old Efgeeco Works on Balham Hill, 'the first room was full of women making the old dog beds, maybe ten or twelve of them, in the next were the engineers who numbered about 15 or 20 and in the last room the packers, up to 4 people working flat out.  Fred and John Goddard worked in the main house along with Fred J. Taylor.  I always wanted to ask him to take me fishing.  He was my hero, but I was too shy to ask.  Bert was the foreman, always dressed in grey overalls and a green beret.  He was an absolute gent.'

Early Efgeeco Baitdropper

A rival to the Thamesley and found at Kempton before Christmas, an early Efgeeco Baitdropper.

The Baitdropper

Found amongst a collection of fishing tackle that I bought from a gentleman on Wednesday last, a large Thamesley Baitdropper, designed to deliver an eighth of a pint to the bed of the Thames in a heavy flow.