Shakespeare

The Shakespeare Company was founded in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1897 by William Shakespeare Jr, and for most of the twentieth century it was one of America's largest makers of fishing reels. Its level-wind casting reels, such as the President 1970, the Wondereel 1920 series and the small Direct Drive reels, were everyday bass and river tackle across the Midwest. Shakespeare used four-digit model numbers that look like years but are not, and from the late 1920s until the late 1970s it stamped a two-letter code near the model number that dates the start of each production run, not the individual reel. Reels with the same code could be sold for years, so look the code up in a Shakespeare date-code reference rather than taking a listing's date at face value. Shakespeare bought Pflueger in 1966, moved its headquarters from Kalamazoo to Columbia, South Carolina, in 1970, and was acquired by Anthony Industries in 1980; Anthony later renamed itself K2, and the brand has since changed hands again. The Kalamazoo-era casting reels are plentiful and inexpensive today, simple to clean, and a good way to learn thumb-casting on vintage tackle.