Rods to look for in 2006
My current picks for the year are the Shimano Power Aero XTR Surf, don’t make a confusion with the Power Aero Twin Tip and the other is the Colmic Advanced Surf. Reasons behind this is because both are hybrid rods, using a carbon blank with a fiberglass tip much needed for the sensitive bites of the temperate Atlantic surfcasting competition. We want them casting like a catapult and sensitive like a feather.
Before this rods came to the market, first division Portuguese surfcaster fishermen been trying to emulate what Spanish top fishermen already been doing with rods over the past decades - this is getting top quality carbon blanks and sawing the third piece and enchase a fiberglass tip on it. Of course this process has to be very well done, because you don’t want to destroy an expensive blank and also a bad enchase can rupture on the worse possible moments.
My personal attempt on producing a rod that would perform such these ones, without the hard to swallow sawing process was to buy an Beastmaster Surf S.T.C. (Surf travel rod, very rigid and done in 7 pieces) and make a fiberglass replica of the seventh piece. I achieved a wonderful result and that rod doubled it's value in performance. The price? a few bucks.
