Fishing Magic Concept Rod or similar

Is the Fishing Magic Concept capable of catching most/all species in the UK?

Most of the waters I fish hold up to 20lb carp, the mainstream singles to early doubles. I know the rod would cope with this as would any Avon (John Wilson springs to mind).

If this type of fish was your main quarry and you occasionally had the chance to fish a water that could produce a catfish to 30lb, would you still use the rod on there? Occasionally means maybe twice a year.

Cheers

Andy

If you are fishing targeting species with line of between 6lb and 10lb BS then having set your clutch to 60% of the BS of your line then the Concept Rod will cope with whatever comes along provided know what you are doing and you have room to play the fish. I've just finished reading Chris Yates "Casting at the Sun" and he has caught many 20lb plus carp on 6lb to 8lb line on his Walker Mk IV Avon rod. I'm not sure what the Mark IV test curve is, no doubt some one will know without me Googling it? The FM Concept rod is 1-1/2lb. It's amazing how light Yates fished while targeting very large carp.The largest fish to date I've landed on my FM concept rod was a 18lb plus common on the Ribble, the only fish so far to strip off 60M of line on its first run. I was on 8lb BS line.

Now that sounds like a story worth telling John!...did you think you had a monster barbel on at first, or did you suss out early that it was a carp?

John was dreaming it was going to be a 8 lb + chub

I have no idea about the rod, however I do have some info on BS to Fish weight relationships.

No matter what the fish, detailed study (from some 40 years ago) showed that a fish can only pull one third of its weight in water.

Therefore an 8lb line should be able to haul a 24lb fish straight in. However, one needs to take into account the breaking strain of the knots in use.

At about the same time another study on comparative BS of knots was carried out. This found that the strongest knot is the Blood Knot, coming in at 97% of the line BS.

The much toted Grinner Knot (I'm afraid) is only about 80-85% BS! (This has just been independently discovered by a nerdy sea angler and published in "Total Sea Angling")

Reel Brakes are best set to 50% BS, when the line is drawn straight out in linewith the rod. Varying the angle between rod and line, when playing the fish, will vary the drag. The more acute the angle, the more drag is applied (as any fly fisherman will tell you). The 50% base drag should permit you to play any fish without breaking your line (it sez 'ere).

Now I'm off! Granny is trying to fry eggs again!

That makes a lot of sense Paul especially toold rivermatchmen who rarely used breaking strain lines of more than 4lbfor anything including the feeder, neither did they use hooks bigger than a size 14 although the average would probably have been a size 20.

I always started river matches with a 2lb Maxima reel line and a 1lb hooklength to a 20 hook and either went up or down according to the response from the fish, stepping up to a 1.7lb bayer and an 18 hook if I was getting amonst them. That set up accounted for many a chub up to 4lb and the odd small barbel up to 6lb on the Severn and like all matchmen I hated losing a fish no matter what size if was so it wasn't a suicide rig by any means.

I can recall watching a Gloucesteranglerwin the midlands parks final at Cannon Hill park in Birminghamwith a 19lb carp caught and landed on a 1.7lb mainline and 0.75lb hooklength, yes it took him some time to land it butland it he did to great applause from those of us watching.

Andy, if carp are your chosen target then it would make more sense to buy a carp rod wouldn't you say? The Concept is a river rod for barbel and chub but though it has many uses I don't think it was designedas acarp rod even though it would probably land a 20lb carp quite easily, you would be a bit restricted when it came to throwing out long distances with a bag of goodies on the end for one thing

Thanks for your responses guys.

Graham I understand what you are saying - I've been there done that. I've decided after 25 years of fishing, including pleasure, match, carp, river - I've decided to go back to enjoying my fishing.

The waters I fish do hold carp as I say but I don't specifically fish for them.

I use no more than a 1.5oz lead, a small (less than a golf ball size) PVA bag of 4mm pellets and do not require a cast of more than 50 - 60 metres as most fish from my experience are only a few rod lengths from the bank.

After posting my original question I've revisited some of my John Wilson DVDs and the Passion for Angling ones and it seems that a rod a 1.5lb will be sufficient for UK coarse fish - Chris Yates split cane rod seems to catch a multitude of fish as does JW's Avon rod.