New rod - average session

Over the weekend I acquired a new rod, a 14ft Drennan Acolyte Plus. I mainly plan on using the rod for stick float sessions were there is a chance of a bigger fish, also it will come in handy for fishing the slider on the lower reaches of the river.

Today I managed to get out and test the rod, I planned to fish the same tactics as my last session, just replacing the Series 7 rod for the new Acolyte. I took 5 pints of maggots and a tub of worms, hoping to feed off the dace and attract the bigger perch.

Impressive so far - 14ft Drennan Acolyte Plus

The morning started the same as the recent sessions, the small dace were coming fairly regularly and by 6am I had around 10 fish in the keepnet. I steadily increased the rate of feed hoping the perch would follow but it took around 3 hours to get the first perch in the net. The perch were a lot smaller than on my more recent sessions, nothing more than 8oz. Eventually I hooked a better fish, nothing massive but a perch of 1lb 2oz was soon in the net. I switched over to the avon rod, lip hooked a small dace and ran it down the margin, after a few seconds there was a large swirl and the dace was taken. A better perch was on, it was a definite 2lb + fish, but the hook pulled shortly after I managed to get it to the surface. That was the only perch I managed to tempt on the livebait.

I ended the day with just under 9lb of fish, around 70 dace and 11 perch. The dace were mainly small but there was the odd 5 or 6oz fish in amongst them, the perch averaged about 6oz with only one going over a pound.

Initial impressions of the rod are good, it's a lot lighter than the shorter rod I've been using. I bumped quite a few small dace but that could be down to using a larger hook than I was last time out. I was hoping to hook a chub or a large perch to give the rod a more thorough testing, hopefully next time....