I know a lot of anglers are confident using one pole for everything but I’ve never been in that camp. My fishing is so varied that my main pole – a top of the range Garbolino G-Max 1000 – would get some serious and unnecessary punishment if I used it on every single peg I fished. Don’t get me wrong, the 1000 is really strong – it’s caught me two 200lb-plus bags of hard-fighting fish to 20lb-plus in important matches – but if I don’t need to fish all day at 14 and 16 metres I won’t hesitate to use my trusty G-Max Power Carp instead.
Why? Well I tend to throw my pole around a bit and the venues I fish really lend themselves to a dedicated ‘power’ pole. For instance, Woodland View in Worcestershire is somewhere I’ve been fishing a lot lately and this place is dominated by fishing just six or seven metres out. Soft, bloated 8mm hook pellets are often best, combined with thick lines up to 0.20mm, strong hooks and thick hollow elastics. It’s hardly finesse tackle and combined with a Zorro-like strike and a brute of a carp on the other end, why would anyone subject a more expensive pole to that abuse? There are still occasions when I may need to fish longer during the day and I don’t have any problems using my G-Max Power up to 14.5 metres either.
At other venues I fish, where you are often speed-fishing for F1s, some of the pegs are only 12 to 13 metres wide so I choose my power pole here too. This is because I tend to whizz it about much more and if I hook the far-bank grasses (which I invariably do at least twice a session!) I’m much more confident of pulling for a break with a power pole.
Even canals in winter are often best tackled with a thicker-walled pole. Carbon becomes really brittle in sub-zero temperatures – especially when I’m pushing thick sheets of ice around the peg like I was last winter!
Then there are the animal pegs; the bushes and bramble-strewn swims where chub, carp and big perch live. This is proper tug-of-war territory and no place for a ‘match’ pole. I hear people boast that their poles will do everything – but they always run scared on pegs like these!
The crucial No4 and No5 sections are all reinforced near the base, which gives me even more confidence. It is built on the same G Series mandrel and that means all my top kits interchange, too. I use Power Lite top-twos for almost all of my commercial carp fishing nowadays – some with Pulla Bungs, which I generally choose for stronger elastics, and others that I have drilled myself to create side-puller kits for lighter elastics and deep swims. I wouldn’t endorse drilling your kits but it’s something I’ve personally done without any difficulties – plus Garbolino has just released dedicated Puller Slot Kits so now you don’t have to!
As you can tell, I really like this pole. It gives me bags of confidence wherever I use it and that’s why it comes with me everywhere I fish.
| TECH SPEC G-Max Power Carp 14.5m Four extra Power Lite kits Two short No4s Extendable Potting Kit Pots Holdall RRP: £1,429.99 SRP: £875 PLUS two more Match or Power kits of your choice worth £169.98 FOC (offer ends September 30th, 2011) |
