Show us your Alvey's. Aussie to the bones & proud of it!

[kingie chaser]

Hi raiders, after all this talk about vintage Alveys I though it would be great to have a bit of show & tell thread about them.

I continually read on here members asking questions about them or other members giving suggestion for different fishing applications so there must be something to them right! 

So show us your Alvey's whether its a strictly stays in the display cabinet reel or where in current use smashing up some Aussie salmon or jews off the beach & what your favourite moment was fishing with them.

 

For me my association with Alvey is from fishing long ago with dad off the beaches north & south of Sydney, or when he was fishing for Luderick off the breakwall of Nelson Bay, pretty much an Alvey's in his hand if he had a line in the water.

While I used them on occasions I was more of a spinning reel guy

I actually threw one of dads rod into the surf when I was about 6 years old, He was down the beach with another set rod & I pulled the rod out of the holder & walked up to the rolling surf & tried to cast it but threw the whole rod into the water. I can still see him running up the beach waving & yelling at mum , of course I see it slow motion 🤣

He jumped into save it but couldn't find it, he was devastated & pretty angry at the same time.........…………...as you would be 🥺

 

Basically I inherited dads gear when we had to move him into a nursing home, there is something about looking at a lifetime of accumulating/collecting/hording fishing gear of all sorts, including things like Japanese roped glass buoy's to vintage sinker making gear, even unopened packets of hooks & tackle going back to the 1940/50's era.

 

Anyway I will have to look through some photo albums to see if there is any of him casting from his favourite Alvey's but for now I'll start it of here with is just a couple from his collection, 

This picture even show's a few of the floats made from wood & cork for the Luderick he would hand make.

Will post move as we go,

 

Cheers

Adrian

[kingie chaser]

Was going to go fishing today but with all this smoke around I didn't really want to sitting out in it for hours so had a look through some of dads gear & found another Alvey.

Not sure of the model on this one?

Looks like the mechanism is the same as the 1113 but that has a Bakelite backing,  the body looks like the 805 with the steel backing but the mechanism is different.

I am basing this off info from this resource-

https://australianfishingmuseum.com/alvey-2-2/#

If anyone has any other Alvey history or online resource sources please post the links on here.

There is some cool old stuff in this page as well on the same website-

https://australianfishingmuseum.com/vintage-fishing-tackle/#

 

Pictured with some more of dads hand made luderick floats & some vintage wooden hand lines he used to use, the large one still has 20/30lb mono with a small snapper lead & 2 hook rigged on it.

 

 

 

[wazatherfisherman]

Hi Adrian if you look at Noelm's post 'old things' on page 14 are some of mine- I have a really awesome (if you like this sort of thing!) collection of plain series (A5) Alvey's but I have moved back to Sydney and living with a mate, so everything still in storage unit for the time being. 

Live-baiting for Mulloway and especially Kings was my favourite form with the E5 series, or was it big Pigs on 600's or Bream on the 50 series- wait on , I think I just love using them for any fish!

Will post some photo's when I manage to get to storage unit and take some photo's- the ones made of different timbers make a nice 'contrast' in the reel shelf I made up. You know they look good when non-fishers say they love the look of them in the display- holds about 75 reels

[Green Hornet]

I'll get some photos taken and post them up soon.

I was given my first rod and reel, an Alvey by my parents when I was 6, a 3 inch bakelite model with the large, metal stripper guide along with a 7 foot Slazenger, solid glass rod. I caught everything on it from poddy mullet to kilo plus drummer, but there is one storey that sticks in my head like it was yesterday.

I was 9 and had a Outdoors magazine that had an article by John Bethune about bass fishing in the Shoalhaven that I must have read 100 times and living on the coast close by got my head racing. We lived on a coastal lake that had a feeder creek in a remote section that ran up into fresh water and I was itching to catch my first bass. So I saved my pocket money until I could afford to buy a Floppy lure and planned a trip soon after.

Armed with the above outfit, the lure and some tucker, my brother and I rowed our old fibreglass dingy to the far corner of the lake and up the feeder creek, would've taken us an hour and a half to get there.

To cut a long story short. We never got a bass that day, but absolutely brained the bream up there and some huge fish amongst them until my brother lost his lure high in a tree and I was busted off on the old faithful 9lb Schnieder line.

We've done hundreds of trips up there since in all types of watercraft and still never caught that bass.

So when people talk about this newish craze of catching bream on lures, hell man, we were doing it in the 1960's!!

[Green Hornet]

19 hours ago, kingie chaser said:

Was going to go fishing today but with all this smoke around I didn't really want to sitting out in it for hours so had a look through some of dads gear & found another Alvey.

Not sure of the model on this one?

Looks like the mechanism is the same as the 1113 but that has a Bakelite backing,  the body looks like the 805 with the steel backing but the mechanism is different.

I am basing this off info from this resource-

https://australianfishingmuseum.com/alvey-2-2/#

If anyone has any other Alvey history or online resource sources please post the links on here.

There is some cool old stuff in this page as well on the same website-

https://australianfishingmuseum.com/vintage-fishing-tackle/#

 

Pictured with some more of dads hand made luderick floats & some vintage wooden hand lines he used to use, the large one still has 20/30lb mono with a small snapper lead & 2 hook rigged on it.

 

 

 

Those hand line spools look like they were turned up yesterday, beautiful. Looks like they're silky oak too, judging by the grain in the timber.

[Green Hornet]

Here's my workhorses.

Top left is a new 650 A5 ready to be spooled up for big tailor season down here in a couple of months. Next to it is a cedar 650 A3 still going strong and beside it a 600 A5 with 20lb mono for pigs.

Bottom left is a new 475 B I bought when I heard they were being discontinued, my old faithful 650 C5 that has been modified to take an extra set of drag washers for more and smoother drag, its my breakwall jew reel. Lastly another 600 A5, my bream and whiting reel.

 

[Green Hornet]

The collectables in my home office. The small one on the creel is a 1940's camphor laurel spool and the show piece at the front is a rosewood stained, cedar 650 A7 in as new condition, along with a couple of collectable centrepins. 

That space in front of the kingfish trophy is reserved for the 50 A53 !!

Edited December 4, 2019 by Green Hornet
wording

[kingie chaser]

That's a great looking collection Pete 

 

Im sure dad had some of those yellow style reels but will have to look through the rest of the gear.

[Green Hornet]

All those yellow reels I bought new through the 1980's.  Still do the job, but man, are they heavy. The 650 C5 comes in at around 1kg. Hence why I bought the black A series, its just over half the weight and balances real nice on my Gary Howard Surf Classic.

[wazatherfisherman]

1 hour ago, Green Hornet said:

All those yellow reels I bought new through the 1980's.  Still do the job, but man, are they heavy. The 650 C5 comes in at around 1kg. Hence why I bought the black A series, its just over half the weight and balances real nice on my Gary Howard Surf Classic.

When I was young and fit from climbing cliffs, I could only hang on to the 651E5 yellow glass Alvey and cut down MT 9144 rod for about an hour, such was it's weight. Wouldn't swap that outfit for any other though

[Green Hornet]

Same here. I could never understand what difference the extra weight meant but these days every ounce shaved off is a bonus.

I had a 9144 as my jew rod but ended up building up an FSU4120 that I extended 12 inches. It could still pull the kinks out of 15kg and was a much lighter, which meant a lot to me because when chasing jew, I refuse to put the rod in a holder. Especially when fishing live bait.

These days even my 7144 stays at home for a much lighter Gary Howard with a carbon lower half.

[wazatherfisherman]

4 minutes ago, Green Hornet said:

Same here. I could never understand what difference the extra weight meant but these days every ounce shaved off is a bonus.

I had a 9144 as my jew rod but ended up building up an FSU4120 that I extended 12 inches. It could still pull the kinks out of 15kg and was a much lighter, which meant a lot to me because when chasing jew, I refuse to put the rod in a holder. Especially when fishing live bait.

These days even my 7144 stays at home for a much lighter Gary Howard with a carbon lower half.

Totally understand changing blanks, I had 2 x different 9108's but they were stolen with almost the entire contents of a garage at Carramar many years ago- lost heaps of irreplaceable gear to the thieves, have always kept an eye out for those in particular as I bound an 18 inch diamond on one and a 6 colour intricate chevron on the other and have my name on them under epoxy- as I used to fish all over the place, always hoped to see someone using one that I could use to trace back to whoever stole them- hence my sympathy for others who have suffered this low act.

The reason I stayed with the 9 wrap was we lifted fish about 3 mtr's much of the time, you wouldn't be doing that with today's blanks. Fibreglass still has strength qualities over graphite etc

[Green Hornet]

Were they JS9108's? If they were I had a few myself. With a little trimmed off the tip they made on of the best 15kg landbased game rods going.

Bloody low lifes!!! I suffered a similar incident and lost a lot of gear. Much of it handed down through the family and of high sentimental value that were probably sold at a pub somewhere for a pittance. These days the valuable stuff is locked away in the house and not the garage.

I still have a couple of full glass rods for the rocks for that very reason, but tend to prefer the comfort of the beach these days. Hence the lighter, graphite outfits.

 

 

[Green Hornet]

I forgot to add this one that was my dad's. He grew up living on Goat Island as a kid and fishing was obviously a big part of this life.

Not too sure of the model number of this one, but the spool is 4 inches.

[Green Hornet]

....and the old oyster bottles.

I don't imagine there's many getting around these days still with a lid.

Hi-tech handline with built in tackle storage.

For those not familiar with them, the stick attached to the top one was obviously a marker but also doubled to stuff the bread down the bottom of the bottle. The mullet would swim in to feed and couldn't swim backwards to get out.

They're roughly 7 inches long and an inch and a half diameter.

[wazatherfisherman]

4 hours ago, Green Hornet said:

Were they JS9108's? If they were I had a few myself. With a little trimmed off the tip they made on of the best 15kg landbased game rods going.

Bloody low lifes!!! I suffered a similar incident and lost a lot of gear. Much of it handed down through the family and of high sentimental value that were probably sold at a pub somewhere for a pittance. These days the valuable stuff is locked away in the house and not the garage.

I still have a couple of full glass rods for the rocks for that very reason, but tend to prefer the comfort of the beach these days. Hence the lighter, graphite outfits.

 

 

Hi again no mine were MT 9108's one built for Alvey LBG and the other untrimmed for Pigs. Still have a trimmed JS 980 jig stick or maybe 2 of them

[Green Hornet]

3 hours ago, wazatherfisherman said:

Hi again no mine were MT 9108's one built for Alvey LBG and the other untrimmed for Pigs. Still have a trimmed JS 980 jig stick or maybe 2 of them

Waza, I think it would be easier if you just give us a list of what you DON'T have, haha.

[wazatherfisherman]

1 hour ago, Green Hornet said:

Waza, I think it would be easier if you just give us a list of what you DON'T have, haha.

My motto used to be "you can never have too much fishing gear" but I actually have way too much now

[Green Hornet]

I say how many reels do you need...............................one more!

[wazatherfisherman]

1 hour ago, Green Hornet said:

I say how many reels do you need...............................one more!

Golfers don't go out with one club is my favourite when questioned!

[frankS]

Waza. Several years ago when I was playing golf. I developed a club that you could adjust the angle of the club face and also the length of the shaft, only dray back was it couldn't alter the weight of the club. It was only for the irons, never got around to doing anything for the woods. Sadly it was stolen along with fishing gear, and I have no photos or drawings of my invention.

Frank

[wazatherfisherman]

1 hour ago, frankS said:

Waza. Several years ago when I was playing golf. I developed a club that you could adjust the angle of the club face and also the length of the shaft, only dray back was it couldn't alter the weight of the club. It was only for the irons, never got around to doing anything for the woods. Sadly it was stolen along with fishing gear, and I have no photos or drawings of my invention.

Frank

Hi Frank you are a master inventor! That sounds like a bloody awesome idea- my housemate here just said that's millions of dollars to the right market and he doesn't play golf! - I only say the golf club analogy to people who shake their heads at my fishing collection. 

 

[kingie chaser]

4 hours ago, frankS said:

Waza. Several years ago when I was playing golf. I developed a club that you could adjust the angle of the club face and also the length of the shaft, only dray back was it couldn't alter the weight of the club. It was only for the irons, never got around to doing anything for the woods. Sadly it was stolen along with fishing gear, and I have no photos or drawings of my invention.

Frank

I've got one called the super stick.

17 golf clubs in 1from putter to driver.

 

[frankS]

Well there you go. maybe I wasn't the first to think of it. That one is more elaborate than mine but the similar principle. Can the shaft be adjusted to different lengths as well ?.

Frank

[kingie chaser]

5 hours ago, frankS said:

Well there you go. maybe I wasn't the first to think of it. That one is more elaborate than mine but the similar principle. Can the shaft be adjusted to different lengths as well ?.

Frank

No it's one length but it is actually telescopic & the lenght of it is only about 12 inches collapsed.

It hit pretty good the day I took it to the range but shorter un distance to my usual hitting distance for the same club.

Think it's from the 60's?

 

Anyway back to the Alvey's.

Have my eye on a vintage Luderick reel, might start adding to what started out as dad's collection 😁

Edited December 7, 2019 by kingie chaser