“At the end of last year I had my van broken into and all my gear stolen, it really was a bad time as my work tools were also in my van so obviously the tools had to to be bought again first but luckily a few good friends helped me out. It wasn't long before I was back on the bank and after a couple of people had recommended the Wychwood 301 carp rods I went for them. I went for the 3.5lb test curve as I do a fair bit of range fishing. I got them straight out to a local pit and I was really impressed with how they cast. I was hitting the clip at 160 yards with a 0.38 mono straight through with a 4oz lead and with a baited rig hitting the clip at 140 yards nearly every time. Before everything was stolen I was fishing a small lake near me that I had been doing quite well on so I decided to go back to the for the rest of the winter. The maximum cast on the lake is probably only 50 yards but with the big leads I like using and how weedy the venue is these rods really did cope well with everything, and by the end of the winter I had landed a number of fish with 8 being over 30lb.
"After this I was waiting for a ticket to come up so I went round different day ticket waters for the next month from the linear complex fishing at range on Brasenose 1 to Cottington lakes, where I had a stunning 36lber.
"Then a ticket came up for a syndicate in Essex I had been waiting for. It's a tricky venue that is very weedy. I was lucky enough to catch on my first session a 24lb common but what I noticed this session was a lot of the fish sat out at range out of the way of the angling pressure. My next session was a really tricky one I had booked time off work and had 6 nights ahead of me. I had a take after a few hours of being there which I ended up losing in the weed and the lake just switched off after that and I didn't see anything to go on to. After keeping an eye on the weather app on my phone it said there was a new wind coming so I moved down the other end of the lake a day early before the weekend guys turned up. Luckily it did and on the last evening I finally got a take, a lovely 35lb mirror and that was the only fish caught all week.
"After that session things have been going really well fishing at range to small clear areas in the weed and catching most visits down there. It wasn't until my last session that I had one of the big’uns out. I carried on with my normal tactics fishing at range over beds of bait on small clear areas. It didn't take long to get my first take I had a 21lb common through the night and at first light a lovey 26lb mirror but after that it went dead agai. The fish were showing just out of my water and in someone else's, and with nowhere to move I had to just sit on my hands and hope they came back. Luckily for me they did and I landed this 42lb mirror the following morning.
"These are a lovely set of rods and really are capable of hitting big ranges and also have a very nice playing action I would highly recommend these rods and they have done very well for me over the past 8 months.”
