Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Short and sweet
This wallet-friendly rod and reel combination may be short in length but it’s long on assets when fishing smaller venues JRC DEFENDER 10ft, 3lb COMBO RRP: £69.99
IT WASN’T that long ago that if you wanted a specimen carp rod, it would be 12ft or 13ft. Anything shorter were specialist tools that only a few manufacturers made. Nowadays, though, almost every range will have a ten-footer, or even shorter in some cases. So what is the benefit of a shorter rod? Not only are they much easier to transport, whether that be in your car, in your hand or on a barrow, they enable you to cast more accurately and generally provide a far more pleasurable experience. On big lakes where long casts are required, then yes, you will still need a 12ft or 13ft rod as a short rod creates a much smaller arc during casting which doesn’t generate as much power. But on many venues casts of more than 50 yards are rarely required and a shorter rod is far more suitable. For this month’s live test I had been sent a pair of JRC’s new Defender 10ft, 3lb combos. These sets, which comprise a two-piece Defender rod, a Mitchell Avocet Black Edition freespool reel spooled with mono and a quality, well-padded single rod sleeve. There’s also two 12ft, 3lb combos available – one a two-piece, one with a three-piece. Long Island Lake, situated in the Cambridgeshire village of Earith, would be the ideal venue to try out the 10ft rods. The lake, around a couple of acres in size, is divided by a large peninsula which runs across the middle and several reedbed islands of varying sizes which means there are no big casts required. Instead, short accurate casts would suffice. Having never fished the lake before, I made a couple of circuits of its banks. Fishing along one bank is restricted to those staying in the on-site caravan park but I found several groups of carp enjoying the early spring sunshine dotted in several different parts of the lake. I eventually decided to set-up towards the end of main peninsula as this would enable me fish in both halves of the lake and cover plenty of water.
One rod was assembled with a running rig and two ‘kernels’ of artificial pop-up corn on a simple blow-back rig. This would be cast out with a small PVA bag of pellets towards the end of a reed island where I’d seen a fish moving around and catapulted a few 8mm halibut pellets. The second rod was fished with a large flatbed Method feeder in between two islands at 30 yards which carp were moving between. This is where the 10ft length really came into play and both rigs were flicked out accurately. There was none of that awkwardly trying to lob out a rig that you sometimes find with longer rods when trying to cast distances beyond an underarm flick, but shorter than a proper overhead thump. The rod felt nicely balanced with the Avocet reel, as again, because you’re not casting big distances there’s no need for a heavy big-pit style reel. The running rig rod started receiving liners almost straight away and after 10 minutes
“This is where the 10ft length came into play and both rigs were flicked out accurately”
line was being pulled from the freespool system. After the initial run, the fish came in easily and a small tench was netted. Not the species I’d come for but the tip had been soft enough to prevent the fish being bumped off which can be a problem on some stiffer rods with a higher test curve. A crucian and a bream were then landed before a full-blooded take finally suggested that a carp had picked up the double corn hookbait. With the rod bent over, I disengaged the freespool system and piled on the pressure to get the hooked fish away from the reeds. It plodded around for a few minutes with the rod tip cushioning every lunge. A nice little ghostie proved to be the culprit and this was then followed by a slightly bigger mirror. A few more bream were then landed before the day ended nicely with a small common. www.jrc-fishing.co.uk