The Wonder of Woolies

As a fishing mad 13 year old boy Woolworths was a fishing mecca for me. Most Saturdays I would be dragged off to some local town or city with my parents and brother for a shopping expedition. This was the mid 1970's a pre personal computer age with no internet or even cash machines. If you wanted to buy something it was the shops or the Empire stores catalogue.
Like many other children of the 'winfield age' I bought my first record from them, gorged myself on pick and mix and chose my Christmas presents from their shelves. However, what really fired my imagination, and became almost as big an obsession as fishing itself was the fishing tackle they sold. I even had my own favourite branch of Woolies. Monmouth didn't have the biggest shop but I loved its polished wooden floor and the range of tackle was sufficient for my  meagre purse. After all my paper round only paid £1.40 a week but it was enough for those essential odds and ends you always need and floats of course!
I loved the way the floats were packaged in the trademark winfield plastic wrapping and hung in a tantalising way from the hooks. In fact the uniform packaging seemed to be part of the appeal. I still have some of their 'River' floats and some wire traces knocking around in my tackle bag to this day.

The orange tipped balsa float on the left was a favourite of mine when we fished the River Lugg at Marden in Herefordshire. A pinch of bread flake trotted down the far bank under some over-hanging bushes produced numerous dace and small greedy chub on almost every occasion I fished. But it wasn't just the floats that I coveted. They made rods and reels too.
My first ever fishing outfit came form Woolies. A 6 foot solid fibreglass rod finished in white with green whippings and beautiful cork handle with an integrated reel seat, The reel itself - also green -was a winfield Newcomer, a neat little fixed-spool reel ideal for a beginner . However, it wasn't long before I had my eye on a new rod. The object of my affections was a winfield Roach Fisher. I longed for this rod. It was an 11 foot green hollow glass rod that I was sure would improve my fishing no end.  I would go as often as possible to look at it and if I was feeling daring actually hold it. Of course I never bought one. It was too expensive for me at the time and then as so often happens events took over and I really didn't need it anymore as my great uncle Jack gave me a Sportex Mambo 12 foot match rod.

I still have the Gone Fishing book that was part of the Winfield Leisure series of publications. Chapter 8 is two  pages of the Winfield rods and reels. To be honest the photo of the coarse rods does little justice to the splendour that was the Roach Fisher but it's there as a reminder to me of that whole era.