Carp
rods
Carp fishing has grown to become the most popular type of
fishing in the UK. Many of you will be new to carp fishing and
will be thinking about your first set of good quality rods but I
think many of you reading this will have been carp fishing a
little longer and already own a set of quality rods, probably
built on Harrison's blanks.
For the newer carp angler I offer a few comments and a bit of
history to help you better understand the types of rods we
make.
The
first quality carp rods of any standing were the Richard
Walker
MK1V's. These were 11ft. long, made from split cane and bent into
an almost perfect curve under load. This type of rod was later
copied in glass fibre. These rods were very effective at playing
big fish in small waters. They could apply lots of pressure to a
fish to tire it quickly but they were not so good at casting any
distance, still, they did not need to, fishing at the
legendary Redmire didn't call for that.
Glass
fibre revolutionized fishing rods and opened-up the possibility
of making longer and lighter rods and as time went by, carbon
fibre extended this trend. In the 1980's a good selection of
carbon carp rods emerged from Conoflex, Sportex, Bruce and
Walker, North Western Blanks and Tri-Cast. These were now
stiffer, longer and in the main lighter. Twelve feet became the
norm with a few thirteen footers available. If you were to
compare these rods with the Richard Walker rods you would call
them fast taper but by comparison to today's rods, they would
be through action.
Through
the
1990's
trends in carp fishing had been to use bigger leads at longer
distance. Venues fished got bigger and big fish were more
plentiful. This called for a new generation of rods and there
were a number of different approaches in design and a few
evolutionary non-starters used in carp blank materials - boron
-
kevlar - dyneema.
We
have our own distinctive style of rods. We like to make beautiful
rods and pride ourselves on our rod building, but function comes
first, no gimmicks, focussing on the blank's performance first
and foremost. Although we make rods that can cast distance, they
all retain a certain feel when handling big fish. All our carp
and barbel rods have unique characteristics that allows the blank
to feel more alive in the hand when casting and playing fish, yet
can produce great distance unlike stiffer, duller feeling blanks
from abroad.
Feel
free to use the enquire form to contact me for any technical
information that you may require regarding our rods.
Don't
forget our rods are Hand Made and British built, not mass
produced in an Asian factory where they know nothing of our
style
of fishing.
Colin
Leatherbarrow (rod builder)