I have purchased a reel on Ebay that I thought was interesting. The Ebay number is 7240880085. The reel is a Atlantic 127. This reel looks exactly like a Penn but is not. The seller states that a group of unhappy Penn employees broke away from the company and started manufacturing this reel on their own. Penn came into the picture and brought the group back into the fold. The reel I have is brand new, unfished, mint in the box and if anyone is interested, the seller has four more that he will be listing in the near future. Can you guys come up with some more of the history of the Penn employee incident that this seller is talking about?
HEY! I saw same reel up at Nationals...with the same story; can't recall who had it but, maybe Herbert Henze, son of Penn Reels founder Otto Henze who gave a very interesting talk at Nationals could put a bit of light on the story.
Mr. Henze gave a talk recalling his first hand experiences working at Penn- from childhood memories to more current events... had some great items for "show and tell" as well... just the sort of thing that makes an ORCA National a "must attend" event.
I sure wish I could have attended the National. Maybe the next one will be possible for me to get to.
Anyways, the Atlantic is a cool little reel. It is a Penn but it is not. Just my kind of stuff and I love the employee stories. I think that Otto Henze left Ocean City for the same reasons his employees left him but he was smart enough to bring them back. Who knows, if those employees would not have returned to Penn, maybe today we would be fishing with Atlantic Internationals and Atlantic Jigmasters. No piece of info is too small for me concerning this story.
The models of Atlantic reels I've seen are 115, 115M, 116M, 117, 125, 126 and 127. Has anyone spotted any other models? I would think there would at least have been a 116.
