A sale on Saturday (November 24) in Chippenham, Wiltshire, lists “a quantity of fishing tackle reels and rods, including a Youngs Pridex Lightweight, numerous other reels, several other fishing rods, net etc”. Hard to tell from the photograph, but one of those reels looks to be an early Mitchell Cap and an early 300. (The Pridex isn’t shown.) You may be buying a load of tat, but if you’re nearby, might be worth taking a look. It’s lot 627, and  comes up at Chippenham Auction Rooms.It carries a £100-£150 estimate.

The days of otter hunts are long gone, but it’s not unusual to find cased otters as a memory of those days when the only good otter was considered to be a dead one. At Peter Francis auctions in Carmarthen,  this otter with his catch (it looks like a trout) comes up for sale on November 27, and carries a £150-£200 estimate. The case is 40in long, but it appears to have been kept in a place where both light and cigarette smoke have tinted both fish and otter. Still, if your local water is having problems with otters, you might find that this specimen sits nicely in the club hut. It’s lot 441 in the sale.

Stuck for a Christmas present for your wife or loved one? How about this treen Victorian knitting sheath in sycamore, in the shape of a fish?  Ideal for keeping knitting needles (or, I guess, floats, disgorgers and forceps) and it carries the legend, God is Love. It’s lot 1104, and is part of Mellors & Kirk’s two-day fine art sale in Nottingham on November 29 and 30. It carries a £150-£200 estimate.

Several angling items are listed in Cuttlestones Wolverhampton specialist sale on November 30. They include a batch of fishing books, a 19th century Jones of Jermyn Street brass reel, some cane rods and a pretty decent pike in a flat-fronted glass case.

The oldest piece in this round-up is very old indeed – 100-145 million years or so. It’s a large fossil fish from the lower cretaceous era, with its scales, fins and skull structures all well preserved. The fish, from Brazil, is 26in long, and though it’s unidentified (any readers help here?), it’s quite a piece. It comes up for sale on December 14 at Timeline Auctions in London. Carrying a not unreasonable estimate of £200-£300, the fish is lot 738. (There are also a couple of dinosaur eggs in the same sale, for those who want to play Jurassic Park games.)