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A master machinist descended from a lineage of machinists and mechanical engineers, John Milner came to Canada from Birmingham, England in 1963. He found work as the lead hand in an engineering workshop on the West Coast. In his spare time, he loved to fish and he also enjoyed repairing antique centerpin reels for friends who fished the Vedder and Thompson rivers with him. A decade into his hobby, John decided he could do better than what was commercially available and started to develop his own original pin reel. He wanted to create a reel that could withstand the rigors of steelhead fishing while retaining the classic elegance of the types of reels that went out of style around the time of World War II. This was around the time that nylon fishing line was invented, which John says caused a radical shift in how reels were constructed and used.
John’s first bushing centerpin reel was such a hit with his friends that he proceeded to make a small run of them. In 1977, seventeen John Milner bronze bushing float reels were released into the wild, bringing joy to an elite group of fishermen who preferred using traditional methods to catch BC salmon. Word of mouth led to John being flooded with local and even international requests, so he started on his second batch of reels, The Talisman, a model which he still produces today. John continued crafting and refining his reels as a part-time hobby. The centerpin or trotting reel as John calls it is a type of reel where one casts out into a stream, allowing the bobber or float to trot downstream with the current into the mouth of a hungry fish. The bait is quickly retrieved for another cast if there are no takers. This process is repeated until one actually catches a fish or “someone at home calls wanting to know what
SUMMER 2017 |