Thomas Turner
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To be honest, something I’m always hoping to be, I wasn’t really on board with the Bomb rod, not now, not in 2022/23. I could see that match anglers might well have a use for them but I wasn’t entirely sure that the obvious Thomas Turner Classic+ audience would find them a must have item. My own history with Bomb rods goes back to the Seventies with the glass Marks and Marlow Persuader and later, with the carbon Drennan IM8. The Persuader changed my life when it came to striking shy roach bites, in cold weather especially. The IM8 superficially seemed a better, more modern version but it never quite did it for me. Moving even further forward, the Hardy Marksman bomb rod was one of the models I used with extreme infrequency. My big Norfolk river roach days were largely behind me by the turn of the Nineties and I sort of lost interest in the rod design as a result.
My friend the Christmas robin
BUT!! Christmas Day 2022 and I went down to a swollen but fishable river Wye…largely to clear my head, get a bit of space and escape into a mellow afternoon. I also decided to give myself time with the Thomas Turner Classic+ Bomb rod, just me and it, let’s call it “her”, and see where we ended up. Things did not start well. My worms I found were dead. I hadn’t had the opportunity to buy maggots and of course all shops were shut for bread, corn or meat! My planned perch attack looked dead in the water till I remembered the spade in the shed and the acres of Herefordshire soil around it! Twenty minutes hard graft, aided by the robin, produced enough bait for a couple of hours of what I expected to be inaction. At least I’d have time to think, to chill, to make a Bomb plan to engage me through January. My Bomb and I…what a team we would be.
The tight swim where a ten footer works a charm
I was right about the lack of fishing action but I did adore that rod, all ten feet of her. So cute. So slim. So darned sexy, if you are allowed to use that word in these woke days? There were immediate advantages. It’s a tight swim, hemmed in with branches that murder a 13ft float rod but the Bomb let me cast with ease, overhead too. It was that extra distance, I think, that won me the bite that I did have ..and which I missed because I was fiddling with my phone. How appallingly teenage I admit but the bite itself the rod made pretty much unmissable. A poor start made all round; next cast went into the tree, my fault entirely, and then I fell in to my waist slipping on the mud. Time to exit stage left!
The tight swim where a ten footer works a charm
Before my cock ups, I had not only become a little besotted with my Bomb but had decided that January at least we’d be inseparable. Perch for sure. Roach again, lower downriver, Hereford way. Chub, sure to come along. And okay, weather permitting, we might even do a barbel dance together…I have a feeling that I might well be surprised by her silky strength. We’ll see but I have a good feeling IF the weather is kind, or at least if the river is not over the fields.
Chub and Bomb rod, roamed with ease
Four weeks then, to relearn my Bomb days, with what feels to be a real cracker of a rod. Nice quest or what?!
PS!!! 26th December and I was back again! This time a four pound chub came the way of my Bomb and me. What a bite…not even I could mess up that one. But get this…never has a rod hauled a chub from marginal foliage quite like this one did. I do not get it but that’s what happened. One chub a rod legend does not make..to paraphrase some saying or another. But. blimey a good start.
The post Conjuring Coarse Magic – Re-learning the Bomb rod appeared first on Thomas Turner Fishing Antiques.
Continue reading...
My friend the Christmas robin
BUT!! Christmas Day 2022 and I went down to a swollen but fishable river Wye…largely to clear my head, get a bit of space and escape into a mellow afternoon. I also decided to give myself time with the Thomas Turner Classic+ Bomb rod, just me and it, let’s call it “her”, and see where we ended up. Things did not start well. My worms I found were dead. I hadn’t had the opportunity to buy maggots and of course all shops were shut for bread, corn or meat! My planned perch attack looked dead in the water till I remembered the spade in the shed and the acres of Herefordshire soil around it! Twenty minutes hard graft, aided by the robin, produced enough bait for a couple of hours of what I expected to be inaction. At least I’d have time to think, to chill, to make a Bomb plan to engage me through January. My Bomb and I…what a team we would be.
The tight swim where a ten footer works a charm
I was right about the lack of fishing action but I did adore that rod, all ten feet of her. So cute. So slim. So darned sexy, if you are allowed to use that word in these woke days? There were immediate advantages. It’s a tight swim, hemmed in with branches that murder a 13ft float rod but the Bomb let me cast with ease, overhead too. It was that extra distance, I think, that won me the bite that I did have ..and which I missed because I was fiddling with my phone. How appallingly teenage I admit but the bite itself the rod made pretty much unmissable. A poor start made all round; next cast went into the tree, my fault entirely, and then I fell in to my waist slipping on the mud. Time to exit stage left!
The tight swim where a ten footer works a charm
Before my cock ups, I had not only become a little besotted with my Bomb but had decided that January at least we’d be inseparable. Perch for sure. Roach again, lower downriver, Hereford way. Chub, sure to come along. And okay, weather permitting, we might even do a barbel dance together…I have a feeling that I might well be surprised by her silky strength. We’ll see but I have a good feeling IF the weather is kind, or at least if the river is not over the fields.
Chub and Bomb rod, roamed with ease
Four weeks then, to relearn my Bomb days, with what feels to be a real cracker of a rod. Nice quest or what?!
PS!!! 26th December and I was back again! This time a four pound chub came the way of my Bomb and me. What a bite…not even I could mess up that one. But get this…never has a rod hauled a chub from marginal foliage quite like this one did. I do not get it but that’s what happened. One chub a rod legend does not make..to paraphrase some saying or another. But. blimey a good start.
The post Conjuring Coarse Magic – Re-learning the Bomb rod appeared first on Thomas Turner Fishing Antiques.
Continue reading...