Guillouds, in Slough

Do you know of a good traditional fishing tackle shop, past and present.
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Mitch300
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Guillouds, in Slough

Post by Mitch300 »

Does anyone here remember Guillouds in Slough? It was just off the High Street on Slough Crown and catered to many different sports, but had a fine fishing tackle section on a long narrow corridor in one corner of the ground floor. There was a fine selection of rods to drool over, a huge assortment of floats in a display case on the glass counter, as well as sets of match floats, keepnets and holdalls on the wall, a pile of wicker baskets, lots of Efgeeco tackle boxes, stacks of boxed reels behind the counter, big pile of `Tight Lines' catalogues, etc. There used to be a young guy with a beard and long blond hair that went half way down his back (it was the seventies), who would sell you a very generous half-pint of maggots that pretty much filled a pint container. Like most tackle shops of that era, customers would drop in to get bait and other essentials then spend half an hour chatting about the fishing, their last match, or their next outing. The staff were very skilled in serving one customer while carrying on a conversation with two others. All part of the shopping experience. A couple of times (in the close season), they rented a local hall and had a free tackle exhibition and film evening, when the hall would be packed with Slough's anglers watching footage of Swedish salmon fishing or a documentary on the National.

I think they lost a lot of non-fishing business in the eighties when an adjoining shopping centre was built next to the multi-story carpark, with a couple of competing `sports' stores that sold only general run-of-the-mill merchandise, and may have closed down soon afterwards.

G. B.

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