@Chris Jones after much thought I pulled the trigger myself on the 17ft hi s
Took a reel into the shop and gave it a much better assessment before shaving £450 off my balance.
I’ve got different ambitions for it than yourself as I’ll be doing more on the tidal and deeper stretches of the middle T and if I can trade a slider set up for a set of rubbers then happy days.
Personally I wouldn’t pick it as a tenching rod unless I’m expecting very special fish or fishing very close to snags. There is no question it’s a power float and on my local lakes down south with tench averaging 4-5lb I’d definitely prefer the finesse offered by the acolyte 17ft over the Hi S but obviously things could be very different where you go.
The rod itself is nothing short of beautiful. It’s not slim in the grand scheme of things but then I’m yet to find a real slim blank offered at that length as rigidity will likely take priority.
Put a reel of 300g on it and your balance point sits around 220mm infront of the reel seat so a little nose heavy for your light reels but not something that would phase me personally.
The overall weight of the rod itself is so light for what it is, you’d probably make the rod feel lighter by stepping up to a slightly heavier reel perhaps and moving that balance point to around 6 inch.
There is a relatively fast tip there but it doesn’t take much pressure before your out of that zone and into the rods curve. It then becomes a stiffer quite through actioned rod. Every section bends when it’s under load but there’s some resistance there in the rods power and I personally wouldn’t run anything lighter than 5lb line through it. I’d even happily go to 8lb knowing it would probably give before the rod does.
It’s a nice action but it’s definitely tailored towards special fish and not a rod I’d pick up unless I was specifically targeting fish that my other rods would simply struggle to maintain control with. Like my original 15ft version it will primarily be used for big barbel but a longer option.
They have done a good job of shaving weight off but they’ve done it all in the handle. The blank isn’t any lighter than the original and the rings are actually identical. I’d prefer to see a higher stand off on the butt ring but the rest are excellent for the distance they are away from the blank. Nice sizes too you could easily run stop knots through them with very little casting impairment at all.
The handle is a good 3 inch shorter. They’ve dropped all the steel in the caps and collars and used duplon on the for-grip and back.
The reel seat is finally one I can learn to love. Way better than the old carbon self loosening crap they used before and we’ve got a decent cork not this ultra thin slim rubbish that seems to be the fashion.
On paper at 216g (I’ll check it’s right later) it’s 2g lighter than my measured weight of the original 15ft version so neither are heavy rods for what they are however as you’d expect the 15 feels lighter simply because the bulk of the weight is more shifted closer to your hand.
I will give it a try out on the nene for big chub to see how it fairs but I can’t see it replacing my avenger3000 at 15ft for that job personally.
Hope that helps in your decision making because it’s not a cheap rod to get wrong.
