which rods

what's your budget like? if you've got a big reserve, go for the daiwa emcast rods on the 'rods' section. if you have a low budget, go for the JRC Defender rods, i really rate them.

Now then look at nick riding on the back of my many hours searching around!!!! lol. Now then russ as nick said it all depends on budget to be fair. The Emcasts look good, the Catfish Pro rods look good too as they are purpose built. The sonik mk3 or greys prodigy are great rods, its just personal choice mate. I might have a couple of fox warriors you could purchase soon if you want but to be fair you can pick them up cheap enough anywhere. Hang fire on this one russ and I might have an Emcast you can look at when we hook up, see what you think. Just have a shop around, as long as it is strond, a good tip to middle action and has plenty of eyes you will be fine, again mate its all on budget.

if ou can afford them, go to the Yately angling Center. they do custom built rods to your specifications with as many eyes and whatever action and test you like among many other options. i don't think they cost much moe then the Emcast rods either.

How much nick? would love a rod with my name on it.

i don't know exactly what it's cost coz it's calculated by the number of eyes, type of blank, no. of charicters on the blank, ect. there are a few companies that do custom built rods. the only reason ive got the idea is co i spoke to a guy on the carp lake using custom built rods, they cost him 110 quid a rod, but what he had was completely different from what us catters want.

cheers guys i dont hav a big budget as im only a apprentice joiner but i want to be able to use it for cats and carp.

True, the specs you look for in a cat rod are totally different to a carp rod but it starts getting expensive for 4 of them.

Have a look at the daiwa emcast link on the other rods thread and see what you think. There are loads of posts of what rods the other lads use on there too.

by "not big" how much are you talking? Wychwood do some lovely casting and playing rods in the 50-100 quid price brackett, especilly on ebay.

prop about 100 per rod

Was looking at them the other week, not bad but not for me. They do look the best rods they have put out so far though.

i dont need no reels as iv only just got a new set

what reels u gone 4 m8?

diewa bri reagel plus 5000

you might want to reduce the budget for your rods and get some shimano reels, everyone i talk to has something different to use against daiwa reels. if you like them then it's up to you, but for my money it's gonna be shimanos all the way, they last a lifetime.

back on topic, the best way to get some decent rods is to walk around a busy lake, look at what other people are using and ask whet they think of their rods. you can never test rods in a shop or over the net as well as somone else fishingfor cats can and the last thing you need to do is waste 200 quid on crap rods.

nop im happy with my reels i hate simarno reels i had a set of 8000 and the bairings went on one of them with in a week and since then i hate shimarno.

what was the name of the reel? i've never heard of a shimano reel ever going wrong. all sorts of horror stories about daiwa reels, one of the people i enquired with about what reels i should get has had a pair of Shimano long cast reels for 2 years and he's used them in france, spain and england.

another person has had a pair of Biomaster 8000xta's since they came out, ages ago, and they've never even needed to be serviced. if you buy the little shimano reels then they could brea with the stresses of catcing big fish but if you buy Airlex, Biomaster, Navi, Long Cast or Ultegra reels you can pretty much guarantee that they will never die, unlike my Daiwa Emblem S 5000t that disintegrated under my PB cat.

at the end of the day it's up to you what reels you use, m8, but i would never trust a Daiwa reel for anything.

Russ did you send the shimano reel to Lindre for repair don't cost out normally just the cost of postage
I had an 8000re where the spindle wouldn't lay the line correctly sent it to Wales sent it back within 2 days fixed no cost.