Vintage Horrocks-Ibbotson Utica Automatic Fly Fishing Reel, cleaned, lubed, box

Description

Vintage Utica Automatic Reel “The Little Finger Does It”, cleaned, lubed, adjusted, applied trout graphic, presentation box.
The H & I Utica reel was very popular: It was cheap, durable and well-made. These reels are always available on eBay, but none of them bear an applied graphic of a patriotic trout with an attitude! The image is firmly secured to the reel's rewind-spring disk with several coats of clear lacquer.
There is a rewind-spring-release knob on the spring disk that free-spools the line, so, if you like to play a fish with a pile of line accumulating at your feet or streaming downstream from you in the river, you may. Of course, automatic reels were developed in the late 1800s to avoid just this problem. If one plays the fish while holding up the spool-rewind lever, any slack line is immediately taken back onto the spool. A particularly good feature of the reel is that it will take in slack line if a fish runs towards you while it is being played, automatically keeping the line tight.
This reel is in excellent working order and rewinds as smooth as silk. It would look great on your fishing rod or it would liven up your reel collection shelves.
Buy it with confidence!  Looking for a Christmas gift for someone who fishes? This would make a great one.
See my other automatic reels with applied trout graphics at:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/holl-1832/m.html