Exclusive!
New flagship pole combines both good looks and amazing performance
We test Maver’s new flagship pole on the bank. How good is it?
MAVER is poised to introduce three new Signature Pro poles to its portfolio, topped by the jaw-droppingly exciting Flagship Signature Pro 900.
This 16m marvel has everything you could wish for, and then more besides. Quite simply it’s the most beautiful pole ever to come out of the Reglass factory in Italy.
This, the most technically sophisticated Maver pole of all time, is graced with a strikingly elegant black Suncore anti-friction finish that allows you to ship in and out at speed in all weathers.
This unique finish incorporates toughened epoxy resins and Nanolith technology for added durability.
For the technically minded, the Signature Pro 900 is built from new STER resins interwoven with an incredibly fine honeycomb metal structure that’s ingeniously impregnated into the pole’s surface. In everyday angling speak, the end result of this is super-strong section wall strength.
This flagship model, as you might expect, comes with a very comprehensive kit package that includes the quite superb Maver Powerlite Power top kits.
These substantially reduce the pole’s overall weight while contributing perfectly to its overall rigidity and strength. This makes it man enough to tackle 99 per cent of modern commercial pole fishing scenarios.
For heavier, hollow elastics the Powerlite kits are reinforced with additional carbon banding and come ready fitted with a quality PTFE side puller slot. They also have factory-fitted internal PTFE bushes, and feature Magic Step and Fusion carbon technologies.
It doesn’t stop there – the pole’s third, fourth, fifth and sixth sections all boast Maver’s innovative Teflon joint system that helps cut down on carbonto-carbon friction and reduce wear. The Pro 900 also comes with fighting fourth and fifth sections, which are built to withstand the stresses of fishing down the edge, or when short-range paste or pellet tactics are called for.
A more than useful Bi-Conical mini-extension can be fitted on to the ends of the larger butt sections to avoid possible elbow damage, and – as with nearly all the latest top-end poles being sold these days – the Pro 900 comes with a choice of Standard or Commercial
kit packages.
Searching around the net, I find that Benwick Sports in Cambridgeshire has the pole available with a bespoke river kit package too.
So what sort of performance can you expect from a 16mm carbon tube that’s going to set you back around £2,999.99 of your hardearned?
Well, obviously it’s as stiff as a frozen snake, and every bit as good at its full 16m as it is at shorter lengths. The lightweight Powerlite top-2s provide an instant response with little discernible tip recoil – the snake awakes, making the pole viper-quick at the business end.
Although I spent a few hours catching carp and big F1s from Decoy Lakes’ picture postcardpretty Willows Lake, it struck me that the pole’s superb shipping qualities, ease of joint breakdown, tip-speed, lightness and balance would have been well suited to running a long line down a river. Don’t take that to mean that it’s not powerful enough for commercials, because it so is!
Maver has undoubtedly thought long and hard about where and how this pole should perform. Basically it’s beautifully balanced, as rigid as an Eskimo’s flagpole, and blessed with an enviable lightness and ease of movement that would run Darcey Bussell close in the deportment stakes.
Response is crisp and there’s strength to burn, basically putting the new Maver Signature Pro 900 among the top 10 poles currently available. Price: RRP £3,999.99
SSP £2,999.99