Telescopics

Poles can be stupidly exspensive. So add a few eyes and you have a telescopic rod that you can buy for peanuts. It is only recently that I have seen telescopic rods selling for more than about thirty quid in continental catologues. Why are they so unpopular in the uk considering the compact easy to transport nature of them. They are used by everyone over here(france) So why not over there?

Don't know bleak! I used to have a 9ft telescopic Shakespear which was great. I also had a 8 ft 4 weight fly rod, again a great rod.
I suppose they are not in vogue. A 2 peice rod can be split in 2 and left tackled up, try this with 3 peice and you start to get tangles to sort out before fishing. With telescopics, you could also leave tackled up, just need to alter depth etc before fishing. I thought the carpers would have gone for telescopics, open bail arm on reel then extend the rod, close bail arm and make any adjustments to end tackle and cast out. Would be easier to transport especially when having to duck under tree branches.
Most telescopics seem to be spinning rods but pikers etc don't seem to use them either. Yet we have multi peice travel rods especially for fly fishing.

Its bizarre, even though alot of folk are trying to manage with smaller cars, the trade just produces bigger and more unweildy gear. Shimano, if you look on their site, do a wonderful rangle of telescopic float rods. Problem is nobody stocks them.

They are stocked everywhere over here, in fact a lot more than uk style two piece rods, although that is changing because of the success of the uk competition anglers there is, beleive it or not, a massive respect for the english match and carp scene. Some of the french publications have pages and pages dedicated the what they say is the english style. What is fun though is that they nearly always have recipe at back of the magazine.One I read was for carp and roach pie with a reccomended white wine.