If you have tuned in expecting me to extol the virtues of this rod for throwing around £20 pieces of plastic in the interests of LRF/HRF or whatever it is they call that pursuit these days, then you might be a little disappointed; but hang in there my friend, kayak fishing is the new kid on the block… we float around on bigger more expensive pieces of plastic which allow you to get closer to the fish, catch more of them and lose less of those £20 pieces of plastic. Enough of my ramblings, let start looking at the rod in more detail…
The 7 foot Concepts are the ones I was interested in – the letters after the rod model, denote the actions – M for Medium, L for light. This review covers the Medium Light rod, but I suspect the Light version would also be highly suited to kayak fishing.
This is a 2 piece (equal length sections), 7 foot rod with 9 single leg SiC rings – 8 on the tip section and 1 on the butt section. The first thing you notice is the graphics, very eye catching/snazzy – of no importance whatsoever to the fish, but us humans do love a bit of bling…
Lets start at the butt of the rod and work our way along to the tip section.
Starting at the butt, more eye candy…
It looks the part, even if the colours are a bit bright. Much nicer to look at than the standard fayre.
Moving up to the handle, the distance between the butt and the reel seat is short, which is great for us kayak fishermen, as it means its easy to hold and to play fish. More machined aluminium and short duplon type sponge grips – all very functional…
The reel seat is obviously a custom job made from graphite, as it matches the finish on the rest of the blank. It looks very high-tec, but the seat itself is a little on the snug side, so don’t expect to clamp reels on much bigger than 4000 size (or ones with big reel feet). That said – it looks and behaves well.
Just in front of the fore grip, is the keeper ring. A minor point, but one which you will learn to love if you are a kayak or lure fishermen – sometimes its the attention to detail that can make all of the difference.
There is a single large ring on the butt section of the blank. Given that this blank is designed for spinning, that explains the size of the first ring – to catch the coils of mono/braid as they spill off the fixed spool reel during the cast.
Not too much varnish and the whippings are quite understated – I like that.
On to the joint between the sections, my only criticism is the lack of reinforcement on the female joint in the form of whipping thread. But the male push-in section does look strong (the end of the section needs to be plugged in my opinion)
The tip section has 8 rings, the first thing you notice, is how small they are towards the end of the tip, this is one of the bigger ones…
The tip ring is neat and not over whipped too much
Okay, so that is the factual bit and pieces out of the way. What is the rod like to use ?
I tried it in a number of different situations from spinning on the river to plugging at sea, but lets stick to the original plan; the reason I wanted to use the rod was for kayak fishing, so that is what it must be judged against for the purposes of this review.
I would pair this rod with a small fixed spool 3000 or 4000 size – I have tried it with various Shimanos and it was great; it seemed to be even more balanced with the Rovex Ceretec 4000 I tried it with using Varivas braid – so much so, that this is the reel that is clamped to it currently, and will go everywhere with it from now on.
Don’t think that because this rod has the word “spin” in the title, that it is going to be a floppy spinning rod (as are so many sea spinning rods). This is a steely pokey carbon wand, which has alot of backbone. Although it is rated to cast 10-30g, it could handle alot more. I was really surprised at the amount of power in this rod. That said, it still transmitted the smallest of bites. On the kayak, it could be used for flatfish, bream, bass and it has enough backbone for inshore pollack work with lures. The ML is not a light actioned rod – ie. its not a soft rod for mullet. There was one job which I thought it would be ideal for. For a long time now, I have been trying to catch a Gilthead bream kayak fishing. I recently broke my duck in style with the Teklon Concept 702ML. The rod performed flawlessly and there can be few better workouts than doing battle with a Gilthead bream.
You can read how the rod performed below…
https://dizzybigfish.co.uk/kayak-fishing-for-gilthead-bream-and-cuckoo-wrasse/
The rod costs £95 (inc VAT) and is available from Veals Tackle…
https://www.veals.co.uk/acatalog/teklon-concept-spin-702ml-3531.html