ABU Piking and Catalog
Collecting.
Mr Jan Eggers
We have been sharing a lot of information and it turns out we have many mutual friends in the ABU world. Jan was presented to me as an ABU catalog nut (like myself) as well as avid user of ABU reels , not exclusively but predominantly, with Cardinals and mostly 500 series. It turns out he is also a very competent large pike fisherman , strange that, (tongue firmly in cheek) !
ABU Catalogs: The list, and doubles to swap
Jan has been a dominant force in both setting up Fishing Clubs and co-operating with others to record data on large European pike.
Read this delightfully crafted story of one man's obsession and passion for fishing and ABU. I feel I have met another kindred spirit.
Story of Jan Eggers and Abu
On the 1st of July 1943 I was born in the small village of Graft, a village
surrounded by a network of canals, small lakes, shallow ditches and all full of
fish, especially pike. Why I started fishing for roach, rudd, perch and bream is
still a mystery for me. Nor my father, nor my grandfathers or any other member
of our family fished or learned me how to fish. But my mother told me I started
fishing when I was 4 years old in a small canal next to our house and I could
fish until it got dark. Later on I earned my pocket money by catching live baits
for the many local pike anglers and also pikers from Amsterdam. At the age of 8
I joined the local fishing club and I am still member after almost 62 years. The
highlight of this period was joining in the weekends some local pike fishermen
and fishing was done with live baits for artificial lures were unknown in this
part of the fishing world. At the age of 12 I caught my first 2 pikes myself,
using a 12 cm roach as bait, doing everything wrong but never mind, I had caught
2 pikes of about 50 cm! I showed them to the whole family, cleaned them and that
evening we had to eat fried pike and I didn’t like the Y bones….
About that time I also had to go to the
gymnasium in the bigger town of Alkmaar and there I found what I had been
looking for so long: a good modern tackle shop. I got a very good contact with
the owner Cees Bijvoet and his nickname was: “Abu Ceessie”. He showed me the for
me brand-new Abu Hi-Lo wobblers, the Abu Reflex spinners which were too heavy
for my shallow polder canals but not for the much deeper North Holland Canal in
Alkmaar. Although these Abu tackle was quite expensive, I bought it for I
discovered in practice that it was not only quality stuff but that I also caught
a lot of fish with it. By catching more and more live baits I was earning more
and more money for buying Abu tackle. I remember how proud I was as a teenager
that I could buy one of the very first Abu 505 closed face spinning reels. A
reel I loved, used my whole life and still use almost every day. Cees Bijvoet
became a good friend and I was allowed to test new Abu tackle and with the, now
very rare, light version of the Abu Reflex
spinner I caught many pikes and
perches. I have one old picture of Jan Eggers with 4 pikes of 70-80 cm that were
caught in less than an hour on a rainy December morning. The picture not only
shows me with my Abu 505 but also a 45 cm half-digested pike found in the mouth
of one of the 4 pikes. For me proof that predators cannot resist the Abu Reflex
light.
After having done my duty for 22 months in the army, I was looking for a job and something in the fishing tackle business was my dream. But such jobs were hard to find in Holland and I got the idea to learn Swedish and ask the fast growing Abu company if they had a job for me. When I had started learning Swedish, I realised that it would be nice to have a penfriend in Sweden so I wrote a letter to the newspaper Stockholms Tidningen and to Abu in Svängsta. Within a few weeks I received letter of young girls from all over Sweden and one from a certain Ingegerd Borgström in Svängsta. A familiar name for Abu friends and her father Tage Borgström, a brother of big boss Göte Borgström, was the personnel manager at the Abu company at that time and had given my letter to his 18 years young daughter. Well, what can one wish more? I also decided to corresponded with the girl whose letter arrived first and believe it or not, almost 50 years later I am still corresponding with Bodil Rehn, not by “normal” mail but by e-mail. The end of December 1967 I travelled to Sweden to meet Bodil, Ingegerd was on holidays to the Canary Islands, and to visit the Abu company. Both meetings were interesting and my plans to work in Svängsta got more shape. In June 1968 I made a 5-6 week trip through Sweden, from fishing in the Baltic Sea till catching grayling and trout in Lappland. I had collected the necessary paperwork for getting a working permit for Sweden and was about to make the final arrangements to leave Holland.
After coming back from that long trip to Sweden in June/July 1968 I was almost
100% sure my future would be in Sweden and I had started to obtain the necessary
permits. On the Saturday evening of the 13 th of
July, it was not cold but there was quite a storm blowing, I was fishing nearby
our village when my best friend came by bike and suggested I would quit fishing
and bring him with my car to the village of Schermerhorn, only 6 km away, where
the annual fair was going on. Not a bad idea and I packed my rods and drove to
the dancing hall. Wearing my fishing clothes and boots was not the ideal outfit
for asking a young lady for a dance but after a few beers I dropped my boots in
the corner, asked a nice girl, Tine was and still is her first name, to dance
with me after having excused me for my fishing clothes, which I still call my
best clothes, and the rest is history. I decided to stay in Holland, we married
on the 1 st of
October 1969 in the afternoon and I remember very well I caught in the morning
hours of that memorable day 4 pikes. Yes with my 505 reel and Abu Reflex light
spinner. The only thing I can say is that she still is my wife for 43 years….
I keI kept corresponding with Ingegerd and Bodil and these ladies also got boyfriends and married. In 1975 I made a 7500 km long trip to the north of Sweden with my family, visited Bodil and Ingegerd and their families and especially the contact with Bodil and family is still very good after 48 years of exchanging letters and last spring she and her oldest daughter, husband Leif died last year, visited us, looking for the tulip fields in spring.
I managed to get a summer job in the plastic industry then, a couple of years later I became manager of several departments at one of the bigger plastic companies in Holland and had a good life. My only problem was I had not enough time for fishing and loving being outdoors I started looking for another job in … the fishing world. Did a lot of match fishing and became no 3 during the National Championship in 1982 after having been regional champion a few times before. The real change had started in 1980 when I received a copy of The Domesday Book of Mammoth Pike by world famous pike historian Fred Buller. I loved this book with the stories of 230 big pikes over 35 lb from mostly England and Ireland. Was unhappy with the fact only a few monster pike from continental Europe were in the list and did collect a list of about 40 big pikes from mainly German and Sweden, many found in Abu catalogues, and sent this list to Fred Buller. Within a few days I got a letter back from Fred, asking if I wanted to help him with a new list for his new book Pike and the Pike Angler and I did. This book is dedicated to Richard Walker, Hugh Falkus and a certain Jan Eggers and I was very proud and even got the nickname The Pike Ferret which later on became the name of my company. The best sources for data of big pikes are editors of fishing magazines and when I contacted them, they were all very helpful, sent me a lot of data and pictures and…. Asked me to write nice stories about the biggest pikes in the world. I discovered that writing articles for magazines is not bringing enough money to feed a family of 5 so I was looking for other possibilities in the international fishing world.
In spring 1984 I was invited to do a slide show at the International Musky
Symposium in LaCrosse, Wis, USA and here I met a lot of managers of
international tackle companies like Berkley, Mepps, Rapala and Zebco. Talking
with them, I discovered they had one big problem: they had no idea how the
European fishing tackle market was working. I told them there is no European
market. The is a German one, a Swedish one and a Dutch one and they all differ a
lot. To become successful you have to understand the history, traditions,
important species and languages of these different markets. Fishing tackle
companies make one big mistake: They think that fishing in the rest of the
fishing world is done like at home. Certain rods, reels and lures used for
salmon in Sweden, black bass in USA or catfish in Austria are no good in other
countries where you don’t find these specie. The next night I got the brainwave
and woke up my wife and told her I had found the formula to start my own
business in the international fishing world. I would contact 5 companies, one
for each working day, and offer them my help as European consultant for a small
fee and working on a base no cure – no pay. The 5 companies reacted in a
positive way andan>
the end of 1984 I left the plastic
company where most people thought I was crazy giving up a good job for a
free-lance adventure. I had no doubt, saw the possibilities in the future , my
wife believed in my idea and was happy to do the bookkeeping and working 80
hours a week instead of 36
in the plastics was not a problem at
all. I had the feeling I was not working but enjoying a hobby. Also got more and
more involved in all kinds of pike business, started the Dutch Belgium Pike
Anglers Club and was 20 years president and the SNB has 2000 members now and I
feel proud of what is my love baby. But in all these years Abu also stayed my
love baby. From collecting the catalogues, testing new reels but still fishing
with the 500 reels and visiting Svängsta every now and then with Dutch and
German distributors.
After working a number of years with Berkley,
later named Outdoor Technology Group and nowadays Pure Fishing, I visited the
company almost every year and at a certain moment I was surprised that each time
I had a chat with CEO Tom Bedell, he was asking me inside information about the
Abu company. I told him honestly that the name Abu and it products use to be
much better in the period 1950 -1985 when the production was Made in Sweden. By
changing ownership, moving production to the far east and cheaper product, the
quality name of the past was disappearing. At that time I realised Berkley-OTG
and Tom Bedell in particular were interested in buying Abu and it really
happened. I joined the merging festivities and had a good time at the black Abu
cabin-house on the bank of the Mörrum river. Also found out that it was not easy
to combine and integrate the American Berkley philosophy into Swedish Abu
management culture but that is history now. Well, let’s give one example. One of
the most powerful advertising and promotion tools of Abu through all the years
was the Napp och Nytt, Tight Lines,
Petri Heil or whatever name Abu
catalogue. This was an institute and I can remember waiting patiently for a new
issue each year, more for the big fish stories than for the product changes.
Berkley had in mind to quit issuing this catalogue in so many languages in order
to save money and use a less costly promotion campaign. Again, an example of not
understanding the market outside the USA.
BecaBecause I loved the 500 reels which were not in production any longer, same
story with the green Cardinals 33,44, 66 and 77, I mentioned in my articles that
I was looking for these reels and would like to buy or swop them. When I became
editor in chief of Voor en door DE VISSER in Holland/Belgium there was even a
little advertisement me searching for these old quality reels. As a result I had
in December 2010 when I officially retired about 90 reels of the 500 series.
Little by little I have started selling the most used examples at the collectors
fairs and it is a surprise how many collector and fishermen are happy with such
an old but always reliable reel. It even quite often happens that when I am
spinning in my polder canals a young fisherman asks me if he can have a look at
the newest reel he has not seen before.
I often wonder how many fishermen caught 4 pikes, all released, on their wedding day?
Jan's home is naturally backing onto a canal for convenient fishing.
After 1984 my life has changed a lot. First of all I could tell my wife that when I went fishing, I went to work, and she still doubts it. I met an awful lot of friends in the international fishing tackle world and fished with Todd and Mike Sheldon of Mepps. Risto, Esko, Ensio and Jarmo Rapala, Tom Bedell and many other staff members of Pure Fishing. Was long time European consultant of The IN-Fisherman magazine, fishing with good friends Al and Ron Lindner and not to forget Doug Stange. I can continue this way and tell about the 19 counties where I caught pike, the more than 1000 pikes over 100 cm and most of all about the many, many hours I enjoyed with a rod in my hand. Fishing is fun and I hope I can spread this message over this crazy, hectic world we live in and especially under the youngsters, the fishermen of tomorrow. Time for a cup of coffee and later on making a long walk with Tine in the white cold winter world and the sun is shining and no wind, just winter wonderland as you see it on postcards.
Through the e-mail Wayne Real sent me asking information about Abu catalogues in
Dutch language I got involved again in a daily e-mail exchange about Abu and to
be honest it brings back a lot of good memories. It also convinced me again th>at
quality is the key to success in the fishing tackle business. Thank you Abu for
giving me a lifelong pleasure by using your products made in Sweden.
Jan has caught many species from all over the world, but his true passion is Pike catch and release/protection. He guides many friends to snare their first or maybe personal best fish throughout most of the year. He he has accompanied and assisted a youngster to catch his biggest Pike to date.
Jan has recently posted me some wonderful ABU items to assist with my collection.
If you are a person that has significantly had an effect on design/development/testing of ABU equipment over the years please contact me wayne@realsreels.com if you wish your contribution documented for posterity and the immediate interest of the ABU fans worldwide!