The next ten years saw a shift to fishing reel manufacture. So, who were ABU and why do I consider their reels made in the 70s-mid 80s to be some of the best ever made? ABU Garcia, originally AB Urfabriken, then ABU Svängsta, is a fishing reel and fishing equipment company founded in Sweden, and is now owned by US tackle giant Pure Fishing (image courtesy of )ĪBU began in the early 1920s as precision timepiece and instrumentation engineers. Sadly, it went a bit pear shaped for ABU after this and the 1990s saw them completely lose direction and nowadays ABU exists as a brand only for the Pure Fishing giant. These reels, although made in Japan, retain the reliability and smoothness of their Swedish forebears. There are a number of reels in the “C” range from the 3 to the 7.3 being ultralight and 7 being heavy specimen/sea work. So what would you get for your 80 or so euro? Well,if it’s an all round reel I would recommend a mid-1980s Cardinal C4.These reels are bombproof, have an excellent drag and are super smooth. In my view if you want a mid-priced freshwater reel that will last the course, it’s time to think Swedish and retro. I used mine for whacking out 40-50g spoons and heavy feeder fishing, not an easy life but still five years is a bit disappointing. The issue is that all this is done to an absolute price and if a reel is used hard they can wear very rapidly indeed. Reels need to have very tight tolerances and be butter-smooth for them to sell. The mid-range reel market is hugely competitive. The Cardinal 44X from the mid-1970s – among the first mid-priced Cardinals Very fine pieces of the drive gear had found their way into the lubrication and this in effect acted like a very fine grinding paste that, in turn, wore out the bearings.

Since the reel was out of warranty I opened up the cover and discovered the main drive gear had worn teeth and was failing to mesh properly with the spindle.

This was a mid-range reel that was silky smooth, had excellent line lay and an unbeatable front drag. I recently had a five year old Shimano reel that began to graunch a bit.

Abu cardinal reels