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On the ground floor of The Capital City Museum near the corner of Ann and Broadway streets in Frankfort, a small room is filled with simple fishing reels made with a jeweler’s precision and an angler’s passion. They are antique tools to be sure, and certainly antiquated by today’s standards. But so finely machined are they that any of the reels on display today could be lined, locked onto a rod, and again used to subdue a hard-fighting, stream-bred smallmouth bass from nearby Elkhorn Creek.
Anglers might be surprised to learn that Kentucky is the home of the multiplying level wind reel, often known as the Kentucky Reel, and the forerunner of the modern bait-casting reel, the foremost tool in any bass fisherman’s—or saltwater fisherman’s—arsenal.
About 30 of these early reels and the stories of the men who made them are on display as part of the museum’s Frankfort’s Fishing Reels: Jewels of the Bluegrass exhibit, which will be open through mid-October 2017.
The reel exhibit, which opened late last year, sprang from an idea hatched when the Old Reel Collector’s Association national convention came to town in 2013.
“This exhibit grew from that,” said museum curator John Downs. “And it has been very popular.”
It’s easy to see why. Modern sport fishing can trace its roots to the tools in the exhibit room. The multiplying reel—which allows more line to be retrieved than can be taken up by one revolution of the reel handle—revolutionized fishing. The earliest reels had a 4.2-to-1 gear ratio, which became an industry standard for more than a century.
The reels on display came from the workshops of brothers Jonathan F. and Benjamin F. Meek, Benjamin C. Milam, George W. Gayle and James L. Sage and—in the case of everyone except Sage, who died childless—their offspring. Many of the reels were made in Frankfort.
The Meeks and Milam are the best known of the bunch, and Milam, who apprenticed in the Meek brothers’ shop, probably garnered the longest-lasting fame of the early reel men. But they weren’t the only ones who built and refined the Kentucky Reel.
They weren’t even the first.
That honor belongs to George Snyder, a reel-making pioneer about whom surprisingly little is known. Snyder died in 1841.
Snyder was born in or about 1780 in Pennsylvania and moved to Kentucky around 1803, settling in Paris. He was a watchmaker and silversmith, and also an avid and apparently skilled fisherman who is credited with building the first multiplying reel in the United States. Snyder owned, or had at least seen, a British-made 1-to-1 level wind reel and likely developed his multiplying design from this simple tool.
At some point, Benjamin Meek visited Snyder’s shop, and the Meek brothers likely used a Snyder reel as a model for their early designs. Around 1835—about the same time the Meeks began making and advertising reels—a customer, Judge Macon Brown, arrived at their Frankfort shop on Main Street with a reel he wanted repaired or perhaps copied. His specific request is unknown, but it is generally assumed this was a Snyder reel.
There are no examples of Snyder’s work among the early reels on display at the museum. A foot-driven metal lathe, used to machine many of the reels, is part of the exhibit and was used by the Meeks, Milan, Gayle and others. It was modeled on a lathe Snyder had in his shop.
“Only a handful [of Snyder reels] were made,” said Downs. “They’re pretty rare.”
The exhibit includes about 30 reels from size 1 (smallest) to size 6. Each was handmade, and a few were widely recognized for their craftsmanship. In 1893, a B.C. Milam & Son reel was awarded a gold medal at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. Similar honors followed.
The early reels—handmade and award-garnering—were also the fishing tools of the wealthy and well-to-do.
A Milam reel price list from 1860 lists brass reels from $13 to $23. A “German Silver” model was $16 to $26. Reels fitted with a balance handle in place of a crank added $1 to the price.
Quality reels today are not inexpensive, but in 1860, a Milam reel cost about what a soldier in the U.S. Army earned in a month, according to Downs.
“This was when $1,000 a year was a pretty good salary for a worker,” Downs said. “Sixteen dollars was a lot of money.”
Of the items on display, the most affecting for me was a scarred, No. 2 brass reel stamped “B.C. Milam FRANKFORT, KY.” Downs unlocked the case and handed me the reel. The gear movements were clockwork smooth, but the old reel obviously had seen plenty of on-the-water use. The display case also included a multipiece, well-used, wooden rod: B.C. Milam’s personal fishing gear.
Hanging above the case is a grainy photo of an old man with a full, white beard standing creekside, rod and reel in hand.
Milam. Reel maker. Fisherman. Kentuckian. Kindred spirit.
Go see for yourself.
The Capital City Museum is at 325 Ann Street. Hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Admission is free.
For more information, go to capitalcitymuseum.com or call (502) 696-0607.
Readers may contact Gary Garth at outdoors@kentuckymonthly.com