The passion for fishing goes back generations in my family. The vintage photo at the top of the “Home Page” shows some of my ancestral family on a fishing trip to Watabeag Lake in northern Ontario circa 1936 (Left to Right – Garf Grasley (grandson of 1 of my paternal great-great grandfathers), my great uncle Frank Miller (my Grandmother’s brother) & my Grandad Wilf Robinson.
A lifetime passion for fishing fostered by my father and an avid interest in history sparked by my mother, together with the gift of a few pieces of antique fishing tackle from my sister, all combined a few decades ago to get me started in the world of collecting vintage fishing tackle. Like most collectors, I began by buying the more inexpensive stuff & a little of everything that caught my eye. Over time many items from my earlier collection years were banished to dusty storage cabinets as my active collecting became more focused on higher quality vintage tackle in the areas of spring-loaded & mechanized hooks, certain lure makers, floats & bobbers and vintage fishing related ephemera. These days passion still feeds my active collecting & research in the areas of “Vintage Hooks” (particularly my very favourite things, namely: “Spring-Loaded Hooks”, “Lever Hooks” & any sort of “Mechanized Hooks”). I also still actively collect vintage “Al Foss Lures“, together with vintage fishing related “Ephemera“. Occasionally I dabble in vintage “Floats & Bobbers“, “Jamison Coaxers“ & “Dead Bait Mounts” when the right item comes along, but these 3 areas of my various collections are only semi-active these days. Other than the collections just previously noted in ‘bold‘ letters, the remaining areas of my collections listed under the various drop-down menus are pretty much static now, and in order to downsize & help fund my active collections, I’m definitely open to selling or trading pretty much everything in these “inactive” collections.
I am in the early stages of tweaking written content & populating the various tackle categories listed in the drop-down menus with photos, but my intent is to eventually include annotated photos of everything from the active, semi-active & static parts of my vintage fishing collections (for the most part I will be adding items every week until everything is posted) ……… I estimate there are roughly 2000 items in my vintage fishing tackle collections, so it will take a while, which means there will always be something new to look at.
As you browse through my web site, please feel free to add comments about what you find or to share some related knowledge …….. simply click on the “Blog” drop-down menu & then on the “Read More” tab to get to the commenting area. The drop-down menu system will help you zone in on the main categories and specific brands or items. Try out our great Search Feature, as it will help you find the link to whatever subject or item you search for, which you can then simply click on to take you directly to it.
Feel free to contact me by email if you have any questions, comments or have an interest in any of the items I post here. I try hard to make sure my postings & item descriptions are correct, but mistakes happen & there’s lots of information out there that I’m not aware of. If I’ve made any mis-statements in my posted vintage fishing tackle items or write-ups, I’d love to hear from you, so that I can make the appropriate correction(s) …….. One of the goals of my website is to promote the free exchange of good information within the “Vintage Fishing Tackle Collecting World”, and your input is critical to improving the historical & technical information that is often not readily available. Also check out the interesting links to other websites that I love to visit in the Links page.
Ian Robinson,
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NFLCC member | CAFTA member | Milton West Fish & Game Club member | ian@vintagehooks.ca