Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Live test: Browning CK Carp & F1 Tickler rods
Tackle editor Mark Sawyer puts Browning’s two new 7ft feeder rods through their paces
BROWNING CARP KING TICKLER RODS RRP: Tickler Carp £74.99, Tickler F1 £69.99
THOSE tiny wands called Ticklers… did Ken Dodd invent them so his Diddymen could go fishing? Oddly enough no! These pint-sized, single-sectioned Carp and F1 models are the latest additions to Browning’s superb new Carp King range. There’s nothing new about short or indeed single-section rods, and few would argue against their having a place in the commercial match angler’s rod holdall. In the case of the Tickler rods, they stash away after a match in a tattyfilarious manner! Simply remove the quivertip, place the hook into its retainer and reel up any slack line. Then it’s just a matter of folding the reel handle flat before sliding the rod into its slim, protective tube. There are no bands, sleeves or broken tips to worry about, and the rods can be taken down and put up again in literally seconds.
For live test purposes I carried both versions to my peg at Decoy Lakes’ normally super-productive Horseshoe Lake, ready made-up with a small maggot feeder and tiny cage feeder respectively. The idea was to start on the cage with a banded wafter hookbait in the hope of a few carp. Then I’d switch to a maggot feeder to sort out some F1s – but the best-laid plans, as they say… Just to have the rods close to hand and all ready to go without the need to yomp yet another rod holdall to the peg had already endeared them to me. It seems that I carry more and more kit these days, so this was a welcome reverse. Yes, obviously the Ticklers have their limitations, but for sheer convenience they are in a class of their own. The Carp Tickler has a surprisingly substantial backbone, with a 50g (1.7oz) maximum casting weight, and it’s said to be suitable for reel lines up to 8lb. The more sedate F1 rod will chuck 35g (1.5oz) and handle reel lines up to 6lb. The Carp Tickler has more than enough
clout in its progressive fish-playing action to cope with fish of 10lb-plus, while its lighter F1 counterpart shares the same action while remaining just about light enough to handle small hooks and fragile hooklengths without risk of hook-pulls or line breakages. As intended, I kicked off the live test on the small cage feeder loaded with micros, all set up for carp with a hair-rigged wafter hookbait. The feeder flew straight and true, and it’s that minimalist 7ft length you can thank for that, as long as the target is within 30m of where you’re sitting. That limitation applies in equal measure to the F1 Tickler, as neither rod has the build credentials for distance casting. During the session the wind got up from nowhere, and within seconds wickedly cold sleet and snow flurries were driving across the lake. It really was ‘batten down the hatches’ stuff, but despite my own discomfort the fishing didn’t suffer too much. I was able to tuck the tips of these short rods right into the bank, where the wind couldn’t buffet them around. That was important when I switched tactics to the maggot feeder, looking for F1s, as these fish seldom give you a ‘three-foot twitch’. It was quite a bonus, in these rough conditions, that every fish – even the carp – came to the surface very close to the net, making the whole netting operation a quick and easy task.