Fly fishing diaries | Pflueger spools

Since my antique Pflueger fly reel is the one I'll be fishing with while I learn, I thought it would be fun to learn more about it. With a little digging, I found a series of documents on the Fly Anglers Online website, documents that listed my model of reel and how it changed during its lifetime. My version of the reel was made for two years, starting in 1959, and came in two spool widths. I have the Model 1494; Dave has the wider 1494 1/2.

The reel belonged to my father-in-law, but we never found a 5- or 6-wt rod to go with it. It was carefully packed away in the original box, along with the receipt (he paid $9.95). It was definitely used, and needed some TLC... cleaning and de-gunking and some new lube, and it works perfectly now. It's old and a bit beat up, but I rather like the thought of fishing with a 54-year-old fly reel.

It just has one negative: it has only one spool. When we did our fly fishing classes at Red's, we both bought new Rio floating line. But since we're going to try beach fishing for sea-run cutthroat, I need a second spool so I can have an intermediate line. Dave has two spools, one for floating and one for sinking line, but he'd also like to have a third spool for intermediate line.

So I went to my go-to place for finding just about anything: eBay. And we found the perfect auction, tailor-made just for us: three new, unused spools, two for the 1494 and one for the 1494 1/2. It was fate, I think.

For more on my fly fishing journey, just click on the tab under the header.