A few months before my rod tip decided to break unexpectedly; I caught an accidental smallish Barbel using my Drennan Acolyte Ultra using ‘light line’ when trying to catch a few Roach, Chub and Dace from my local stream.
I was using 3.2lb Drennan floatfish line (which was within the recommended specs for the rod) and I played the accidentally caught Barbel with a fair amount of care to try to prevent the flimsy line from parting; and I don’t think this was straining my rod in the least; as long as a recommended line breaking strain was being used; which it was (with main lines up to 4lb+ being specified by Drennan for the Ultra).
Plus since I had caught the accidental Barbel I had used the rod many further times catching Roach, Rudd and Crucians without any problems at all.
So as I was using a line of below the specified ‘max recommended line strength’ plus using over 50 years of experience of playing difficult fish; the rod was certainly not being put under any unwarranted stress even though I had hooked a Barbel; I would have thought.
As an aside, playing an accidentally caught big fish on a light ‘recommended’ line strength for the rod is not to my mind putting the rod under any undue stress, the line should break well before the rod decided to finally give up the ghost otherwise it’s not really fit for purpose in my view unless the rod is being abused in some other way.
I have used ultra light float rods since the early 70s onwards without any of them shattering while threading line through their rings, so when this happens surely you can see why I was a little suspicious of the rod especially as there were lots of other Drennan ultras being reported as being broken unexpectedly, however it is still vaguely possible that the rod may have unknowingly been damaged some other way during transportation or while it was being stored, or even a fault introduced in the shop by someone playing with the rod that gradually got worse when it was subsequently used.
Im willing to give Drennan the benefit of the doubt simply because I’ve never had any problems with Drennan rods before, and I’ve had a few over the years; and I still do; however I still use my Ultra with kid gloves just incase it happens again with the replacement tip.
Keith