Constable Twintop

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Eddy Pools
Rudd
Posts: 363
Joined: Mon Dec 07, 2015 11:23 pm
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Constable Twintop

Post by Eddy Pools »

Hello,
I've wanted a decent twin top rod for some time and having read an earlier thread from Reedling viewtopic.php?f=316&t=7155 the comments from Reedling, Nobby, Bumble, and Whopper were so positive a Constable Twintop became the target.

The problem was I hadn't seen any for sale, that is until I went to Romsey and was fortunate to purchase this rod - all complete but without a rod bag.
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A quick clean of the ferrules resulted in all rod sections being a good tight fit, all sections are straight - putting it together the rod felt well built and strong and certainly confirmed the positive comments about the quality of Constable rods I'd read on here.

Assembled it is overall 10' 6" long with the float top section and 9' 6" long with the ledgering top - the cork handle is 21.5" long. It has the number 468 written near the winding check (not sure what that signifies).

The guides had been rewhipped but in a different colour to the binding around the logo which I've assumed is original as it is consistent with the intermediate bindings, several of which were missing.
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I decided to leave undisturbed the section around the logo and name but to restore the rest of the rod.

This is the first Constable rod I've seen apart from a few pictures on here and as a result for bindings I decided to try and match the colour of the existing thread around the logo for guide whippings and all intermediates - FishHawk maroon 337A directly varnished (a very helpful tip from Wallys-Cast when restoring my B James MKIV) is a very close match.

So now I've finished my (lucky?) seventh restoration and here it is with its new rod bag.
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I'm not happy with the varnishing but I am otherwise very happy with the rod and yesterday I took it out to a local lake for an afternoon to see how well it fishes. I paired it with a Grice and Young Avon Royal Supreme that I'd recently acquired and loaded with 5lb line.

I thought I'd use the float top first and fish for roach - size 18 hook and two maggots ..... and the first fish I caught was this 10lb common!
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The rod coped admirably - it felt perfectly capable of dealing with every twist and turn of the fish.

I fished on - still no roach but half a dozen gudgeon and two more commons!

I then swapped to the ledger top but carried on float fishing - laying on in the margins with luncheon meat on a size 10 hook and using the same reel. The first catch was this 11lb common followed by three other smaller carp between 8 and 10lb before it was too dark to continue (venue rules).
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The shorter rod is obviously more powerful and I had to be more careful not to over stress the 5 lb line but at all times I felt in control. it seemed that with stronger line and heavier end tackle this shorter version of the rod would handle much larger fish. I have to say I was also very pleased with my new reel.

Next week I hope to try river fishing with the rod.

Happy? - yes, absolutely over the moon!
Geoff

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SeanM
Tench
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Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2011 9:28 pm
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Location: Bradford, West Yorkshire

Re: Constable Twintop

Post by SeanM »

Looks a lovely rod. I find that most all-split cane rods are quite happy with 6lb reel line. The numbers on the rods are serial numbers and don't seem to have any real significance.
Quot homines, tot sententiae.

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