As a keen specimen angler I find myself travelling to different venues in order to seek my chosen quarry. One week I might be tackling the strong currents of the River Trent for big barbel, while the next I could be sitting behind bite alarms on a tench pit.
These venues obviously require a number of different rods to cater for the different styles of fishing. Then of course you have to take conditions into account. Will the river be in flood? Does the lake require a long range cast? This common dilemma often means taking at least two different rods to the bank to cater for whatever conditions I’m faced with on the day.
It’s the reason I got rather excited when Korum’s new Twin Tip Plus rod landed on my office desk. It’s a rod that has been designed to give the angler the choice of fishing a different test curve without the need to buy more than one rod, and still enjoy all the quality and endurance of Korum’s usual high standards.
With its spliced hollow 1.75lb and 2.2lb top sections, it allows the angler to set up their rod according to the conditions, venue or species they’re targeting on the day and the user can always change over if, for example, they are feeling under-gunned.
Surely Korum already offers something like this in its current Twin Tip version, I hear you ask.
However, while those rods have been faithful servants to anglers over the years, they still ultimately only really offer the same test curve whichever tip you may change to.
Korum’s new product means that only the butt section is the same when changing tops, making it noticeably obvious to the angler that he or she has more or less punch.
The company designed the rod for multiple scenarios and species. For example, you could use the 1.75lb top section for float fishing for big fish on a river while the 2.2lb tip could be handy for casting out to 70 yards on a gravel pit for carp, bream and tench.
With its choice of two test curves, the rod will ultimately appeal to barbel anglers, though, and this is really where it comes into its own.
The proof, of course, is always in the pudding, so in order to fully test out the idea I decided I was going to sample the rod’s capabilities twice over.
In other words, instead of fishing just one venue, I was going to test out each tip on two separate venues to re-enact the common scenario as described above.
Normally, when I visit the River Severn, I will fish a rod with a test curve of over 2lb, but with few snags and the river running lower than usual, plus the fact I was fishing into the deep channel on the inside, I opted for the 1.75lb top.
I fished a scaled-down rig with small pellets to cater for the clear water conditions. It didn’t take me long to test out the rod’s action when a 7lb barbel ran off downstream with my hookbait. Pumping the fish back in the flow, the high modulus carbon blank performed excellently, bending right round to the butt but with enough power to get the fish in without disturbing the feeding fish in my swim.
Two more fish followed but it was soon time to test the other tip so my next port of call was some 120 miles away on a very narrow stretch of the River Nene known as Castor Backwater. Snaggy and full of features and, of course, barbel, I knew this would be the best venue to test out the heavier tip.
Again the rod came up trumps and handled everything I threw at it, as I landed a barbel of 5lb and a chub well over 4lb.
Mark Peck
