NEW GREYS ROD PACKS A PUNCH...

...but its rings could be a lot better!

EDICATED floater rods are hard to track down compared to other specialist rods. That’s odd, given that warm-weather carp seem to spend most of their time on or very near the surface.

Maybe it’s because the modernday carper’s use of zig rigs, with their amphibious lookalike creatures and critters as hookbaits, has made floater fishing seem a bit old school.

But believe me, nothing comes close to the anticipation and excitement of watching a big carp slowly slurp down a surface bait… especially when it has your hook attached to it!

The new Greys Surface Stalker rod has a sleek, silky black carbon blank and is pleasingly slim, nicely responsive, well balanced and versatile. The 12ft blank is reasonably light, so you can hold it for a long time when casting continually to showing fish.

However, I cannot understand why Greys has furnished what is a superb pepped-up floater rod with a standard set of six carp guides. I reckon the blank would perform even better with more and smaller guides, spaced to emphasise its superb action.

That said, the powerful 2.5lb test curve blank packs one hell of a punch that will whack out large, heavy controllers and surface floats a very long way.

Nor is it all about brawn. The rod has a medium-fast action with a fairly soft tip, to assist with flicking out light controllers with long hooklengths. This softer tip allows you to fine down your hooks and hooklengths when required, but you’ll find that raw progressive power runs all the way through its spine, so you can really pile on the pressure when needed.

This was a real asset during the live test. The only feeding fish showing were in a small bay sandwiched between a bed of lilies and a stand of Norfolk reeds. Should I get a take, I would need to go into the water to play and net the fish, and the rod would need sufficient poke for me to wade out and dissuade my opponent from ploughing into the reeds.

With so much cover to head for, I felt the odds were well stacked in favour of the fish, which would either snag me or smash me up.

As the carp began to feed freely on the loosefed mixers they gained confidence, and after half-an-hour I had a dozen decent-sized fish slurping them down with abandon. My cast,