Barney and his new friend went fishing

[oc1]

Can anyone identify the rod or reel in this 1937 photo? Sorry, it is not very clear but thank you.
-steve

[Tightlines666]

Looks like a Coxe to me.

[arley]

Looks like a cox FDR special # 2235a. John Elder told me to say this.

[Brian F.]

Looks like a Coxe to me.

Me too

[oc1]

Thank you very much guys. I knew you would have it and I'll start reading about Coxe.

This was way before my time but the locals were still talking about it when I was growing up twenty to thirty years later. Don't know; maybe they're still talking about it.

The still photos were on the walls of every tackle shop but I had never seen the newsreel until recently. There is a lot known about this fishing trip but no mention of the reel.
-steve

[OCauto]

As small as the picture is, I can barely identify it as a reel. LOL

[Nick in NY]

A Bronson Coxe but the fish is more like 40lbs the most.......about 4 1/2' and without ANY girth. In Cozumel that's big. They average 20 lbs which is perfect for 8lb braided line and 5 1/2' trout rod! Just saying. ......

[Nick in NY]

Also keep in mind the guys lifting it out with a single arm. At my 245lb max with 21" arms I found it difficult with 45 let alone 80! I realized numbers are inflated like the guy who caught a 15 lb 30" stripped bass......But we are talking about the president. Enough said

[oc1]

The first two were snakes. The third one was a bit larger. They don't show them landing the one Elliot is standing with on the dock. Still not 80 pounds or the 77 pounds reported elsewhere. Maybe that's aggregate weight :>)

I'm not sure about the first one, but the second and third were caught in the ship channel. Supposedly, there were secret service, news media and onlooker boats buzzing all around to the point where Mathews said it was a wonder they caught anything. There was also a crowd watching from the south jetty.

By the time I came along, the population had crashed and nobody bothered to fish tarpon in the ship channel any more. In the spring you would fish outside and around the tip of the south jetty and in the fall you could intercept a few on the outside of the north jetty.
-steve

[oc1]

I realize this is an inane thread, but in case anyone is interested.....

Here is another video of FDR tarpon fishing. It is longer and includes several days of fishing along with a ride through the estate/ranch/compound of Sid Richardson on San Jose (St. Jo) Island across the ship channel from Port Aransas. It's amateur filming and the quality is not good.

Note the president's reel-of-choice landing a king mackerel at 7 minutes, 8 seconds.

Here is a link to Barney Farley's book. Starting on page 3 is a description of FRD's trip including Barney's assessment of the presidential tackle. Still without mention of what type of reel that is.
https://books.google.com/books?id=yJeva ... e&q&f=true
-steve

[oc1]

While we do not know the model of the reel in the photos, we know something about the line. After Barney gifted the rod and reel shown in the photos to the President, FDR remarked about thin the new nylon line was and that he hoped it would hold.

This is the first mention I have found of someone using braided nylon fishing line. There were numerous advertisements for braided nylon by 1940 but nylon was first introduced to the public by DuPont in 1937. DuPont launched a campaign to have their new invention, nylon, made into popular consumer products. DuPont and Ashaway Line and Twine Manufacturing Company became acquainted and Ashaway braided nylon fishing line was the first DuPont nylon product offered to the public. Ashaway, Barney Farley and now the President were very early adopters of the new technology.

The timing could not have been better as there was a grass roots campaign afoot in the U.S. to boycott Japanese goods in protest of Japanese incursions into China through the Second Sino-Japanese War. Roosevelt would not sanction the boycott because it would result in some U.S. job losses and Roosevelt was all about job creation. One of the major imports from Japan was silk and the best natural fiber fishing lines were made of braided silk. Line companies found themselves with a politically incorrect and socially unacceptable product and were trying to gloss over fact that their silk came from Japan by highlighting the fact that it was processed and braided in the U.S. They would print things like "American Finish" on their spools.

Braided nylon changed everything and was a seminal point in fishing tackle evolution. Nylon is much stronger than any natural fiber (silk, flax linen, cotton, etc) so a nylon line is much smaller in diameter than a natural fiber line of the same breaking strength. Also, wet nylon did not rot on the spool like natural fiber lines. Nylon lines caught on very quickly and every fishing reel suddenly became larger than it need be for a particular application. A smaller reel could hold just as much line if it was loaded with nylon instead of natural fiber. This is why Barney told the president than none of his reels were suitable for their "new" style of tarpon fishing. Barney called it light tackle tarpon fishing. However, twenty years before J.E. Pflueger also bragged about their light tackle tarpon fishing in the Aransas Pass Tarpon Club so "light tackle" is, and always was, a very subjective term.

That reel in the photo looks like it is about the size of a 3/0, or 4/0 at the most, huh?
-steve