A good "Avon" rod is a carbon copy - sorry, a carbon-fibre copy - of the "Nottingham Pattern" cane rods; stiff, whole cane butt section, pliant built-cane middle and tip, typically 10'6" or 11'3" long and ideally suited to 4-6 lb line.
This pattern of rod, even in cane, proved soft enough to use light(-ish) hooklengths for roach and dace, beefy enough to set a hook at the end of a l-o-n-g trot, strong enough to cope with the big chub and barbel of the day, and sufficiently flexible under load (not liable to "lock up") to minimise hook-pulls.
That's a pretty wide base of uses to start from, and if you can extend such a rod to make a bearable float rod at 12' or 13', you'll have a rod that will make a fair fist of most coarse-fishing situations that don't involve pike, big carp, or casting into the next county.
Add a set of quiver tips, and you'll only be beaten by swims that need a pole or a very long rod, or swims full of such tiny bumpable-off fish that you ought to move anyway!
I rather wish I had one. Or three, because I tend to set up a leger, a float and a spare...
P.S. Why 10'6 or 11'3"? Because they used to make the blanks in three-inch increments - three sections at 3'6" is 10'6", three sections at 3'9" is 11'3". One suspects the ladies who sewed up the rod bags may have been laying down the law.
P.P.S. Those Japanese combis that flooded the market in the fifties and sixties as the yanks helped Japan rebuild its economy while leaving us swinging in the wind - the ones that made a 5'4" spinning rod or an 8' fly rod with two tips - the spinning version was useless, but the fly-rod... those guys really knew cane, and if you can find one with undamaged (or replaced) fittings, its worth a waggle. Slow action, as I recall, but sweet.
