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If you are not in a hurry, I would look for some old Harrison rods. Ballista/GTI rods come up for sale regularly and they can be very cheap. Any of those in 2lb, 2.25 or even 2.5 would be fine. Even Chimeras (my favourite) can be had at knockdown prices. I’ve got some 12ft 2.5’s that are nice...

5 tench to 5lb and a 23lb mirror in a 2 hour session yesterday afternoon. I’m blanking on the river - so it was just a bit of r&r and a check that the bait works…..

I used to use a TE Big Tench for eel fishing - deceptively powerful rods. Back in the day top carp anglers used 1lb - 1.25 rods with 15lb Sylcast for snag fishing. They could land anything.

That’s a little unfair. He talks about balance and family life in the Q&A section at the end. I’ve met a few anglers over the years who really are blinkered and it is fish at all costs.

I think you have got it right. The white surface ‘sugars’ are very attractive to fish - as per Brendan’s Mullins’ example and early Richworth frozen baits. The latter worked best when they were white and about 3 days out of the freezer. My frozen/thawed stuff was actually mouldy (as in...

I once had a freezer failure affect a significant quantity of bait. I re-froze it hoping that it hadn’t gone off; and then I tested a small quantity on some easy carp. I actually watched their reaction and they would NOT eat it - so that made throwing away the rest of it much easier.

Couldn’t agree more. An incredible fish falling to a top eel angler.

Several people I know use similar rods for specialist roach Stillwater feeder fishing. If you can cope with 12 ft I could sell you either a Drennan super feeder or a Tricast medium LR (long range - they are joking!) feeder. Both are nice chub rods. Both have multiple quivers.

I was involved in testing a prototype bait last Winter and the supplier had a devil of a job programming his machine to not overcook the bait. We wanted it soft and ended up with about a 45 second boil - the shortest possible. Ideally we wanted it softer still but the machine couldn’t do that…..

Tiger line is really good - but very expensive.

That’s a different topic all together….frozen against shelf life as in preserved. I’m talking about the faff of making your own against commercially available (frozen) bait. These days I favour the lazy approach as mentioned in post 4 at the very start of this thread. I mucked about with Dave...

If you roll the sausages and then cook those whole; it saves even more time and you can then cut them up/slice to suit on the day. There is also even more uncooked surface area so even more leak off….. Also thin sausages (eg 8mm) cut and fished as long, thin baits work brilliantly...

Apologies for the offence. What I actually said was <edit> - an admittedly abstruse reference to somebody overly concerned about the onset of old age and things going ‘soft’. If I’d written <edit> - then I need a good telling off. FWIW the original comment about those Century blanks changing...

Another vote for the TA quiver - a very well thought out bit of kit and it really is light. I use a Saber small rucksack (blatant copy of the TA one) and that is a good product too - but it is small.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother replying to these threads. It must be the Close Season. Moderator Edited - post reported and edited.

I think many of his rods were built on Century blank. I have 2x 1.75 and a 2.25 built by Paul in about 1984. They have gone very soft over the intervening 40 years !

They close the lake here when the carp start - so after a false start yesterday it was quiet on the spawning front today. If they don’t spawn tomorrow, I expect it will stay open for 2 more weeks at least (based on the weather forecast).

I did the exact opposite 3 weeks ago. Baited a fairly deep water swim for tench a couple of times; away from the main concentration of carp. Turned up early in the morning to find the only angler (carping) on the 70 acre pit was in the one prebaited swim (by coincidence, not design). He was...

There have been several recent ‘scales’ threads on here. FWIW I carry a pair of £5 eBay digital luggage scales as they are tiny and accurate. I carry some old Avons (or small Reuben dials) as non digital back up. The Tenchfisher guys are worth listening to as they do scales checking at some...

As has been said; it really boils down to how particular you want to be. I’m a cheapskate - so I tend to buy custom built rods second hand. That way I save some money because there are loads of lightly used custom rods on the market (which implies that lots of people buy the ‘wrong’ rods). But...