Earlier in the year I purchased a couple of rods at Southern Counties Auctions, perhaps they were entered by one of our members, one was named the chub general, which I have not had the chance to try yet. The other was a two piece split cane rod with a badge on it which says :- Gudgeon
S. Baird, I think it has been made from fly rod blanks, it may even be a converted fly rod, as near as I can measure it is 8ft 9". Anyway I thought it would make a good tiddler snatching rod, so yesterday afternoon I decided to see if it lived up to its name and I took it down to the canal for a couple of hours.
The rod :-
It was quite a nice afternoon/evening and I had quite a few dog walkers and general strollers, one or two looked at me a bit funny when they saw a cane rod and a centre pin reel, not the usual 13 metres of carbon fibre being shipped backwards and forwards. I had even more to contend with on the water, with a steady stream of boats, being the first week of the school holidays there were plenty of hire boats about. Fortunately most of them were heading towards Chester and the natural flow of the canal is in the same direction, it just changed the opposite way when there was the odd boat going towards Nantwich.
As I am not very good at casting a great distance with a centre pin I just fished off the end of the rod, I had a decent amount of bites but unfortunately I was unable to find any of the fish the rod was named after, i.e. gudgeon. I did though manage to catch 7 small roach and 1 small perch which were about the same size as gudgeon, plus one small skimmer bream and one small eel. I think the rod will be great for small fish and next time I will try it with a small fixed spool reel and fish at a greater distance and see what it is like at picking up line on the strike.
Regards,
John
p.s. When I was at the cane & pin match I did ask our honorary vice president if perhaps S. Baird was a member of his side of the clan, sadly it isn't
