07/05/2018 - 70 Year Old Rod & Reel Beat A leviathan

Gary with his first tench

Gary Cullum was up early on Whitsunday for a dawn session on one of his favourite waters little knowing he was going to have a titanic fight on his hands with a big fish. Gary started his short dawn session in search of his first tench of the year, often known by its Latin name Tinca tinca. His rod of choice wasn’t a tube made in China or some other Far East country, his rod of choice was an early 1950s Allcocks Lucky Strike, known as a boys rod, it’s a three piece 10ft 6 inch wand, matched with 4lb lb line on a small 1940s Youngs Pattern Nine centre pin reel, attached to the line was a size 14 hook, bait was bread flake, it doesn’t get more traditional than this.

His first fish of the session was as Gary described it a modest tench – His next bite was certainly something different, not what he expected, for some twenty minutes he was hooked up to a leviathan that could pull the string and bend his stick, but this wasn’t a tench. As the fight wage between angler and fish which turned out to be a mirror carp weighing 8 ounces under 20lbs, certainly a great feat of angling. Also a great testimonial to the quality of this rod hand built all those years ago in Redditch, which was the home of the British Fishing tackle industry. At the end of the fight, the rod showed its true quality by springing back perfectly straight as the day it was purchased

Gary with his big mirror carp

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