The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

Jack Grice in Rotherham , it became G Hamstead and was excellent, my favourite was and is Parkgate Angling centre, small , initmate and run by genuine people.

Im not a fan of the bigger fishing superstores .. soulless.

Bendsomecane

G Matthews in Enfield Town - a long thin shop with big glass counters inside.
Fishing tackle at the front of the shop and airguns at the back - I used to love going in there, it seemed to have everything a young lad could want.

I can’t remember the one in Great Bookham on the leatherhead road but Alchornes in Godalming was a favourite as I used to fish Broadwater Lake for Tench .

Galleons, near the Round Church, Cambridge. They always gave me a discount. I guess they wanted to encourage little lads.

Olly wrote: ↑Sat Mar 03, 2018 12:53 pm Hounslow Angling where Ritchie McDonald worked on a part time basis. Bought loads of Conoflex glass blanks there for my rod building!

This my most used shop . Friendly bunch for sure , totalled up the price in front of you on the paper bag in pen. Which was good for me. My dad bought me my first proper rod in 1981 a shakespherer strike 12 ft float rod ... still got it

Atkinsons Sports, Oxford Street, Swansea. A long 'tunnel' of a shop with lovely old walnut and glass cabinets and circular wooden rod racks holding gleaming split cane rods and also cane blanks 'in the string'. Smelling strongly of linseed oil the shop had an olde world ambience, the assistants wore long grey coats and called you 'sir'. I was eleven years old attending a grammar school in the town and spent many lunch hours drooling over the treasures within. I bought my first 'bits and pieces' of terminal tackle here, a spool of 9lb BS Pescalon line and some size 14 eyed hooks. On my first trip to the waterside I found the line wouldn't go through the hook eyes! I'm not sure what prompted me to buy 9lb line, perhaps I was expecting something momentous?

Castaway in Banbury, a small, cluttered shop that has barely changed to this day.
I still pop in for maggots and consumables, where the same slightly gruff but occasionally chatty owner resides behind the counter. He once told my son that the stuffed pike on the wall sometimes wakes up and swims round the shop, which scared the bejesus out of him.

Millwards(later Aylestone tackle and gun) on the southern outskirts of Leicester and my local pet shop in Blaby where would buy 6 pennorth of maggots in a little aluminium bait tin, I think my bait dropper would have taken them all for one trot down these days.

Carp Artist,

I used to work at Kirkman's in Crawley. All of my wages went on fishing tackle :-)

Triq Bugibba in Awra in Malta1963 With me mum... little shop sold me mum a cane pole with a cotton reel whipped onto a split pin

Back in the UK it was Evans Tackle and pet feeds 1967 a penn'orth of maggots and the shop had a wonderful smell of oiled nets.... in Loughton (Debden Broadway)
Happy Daze....!