A few months ago I was fishing my favourite lake of the Pulborough AS owned waters, Moore Farm, and was using my much loved Daiwa Whisker Carbon Match Rod. Now admittedly this rod wasn't really the right rod to use at this lake as it is a match rod with a very soft action and whilst perfectly suited to whipping out Roach and Bream, isn't really suitable for pulling out Carp. The trouble is that I guess I'm an old fashioned fisherman at heart. Whilst I do own a Pole and two carp rods with bite alarms etc I much prefer to leave them in my rod holdall and simply use a float rod as, for me, there is nothing to beat watching for the tip of your float to suddenly be pulled under the surface of the water.

So there I was at Moore Farm using luncheon meat on a hair rig under a 4BB waggler and I watch my float sail away and strike into a 7.5lb Common Carp. Having landed a 11.5lb Mirror Carp on this rod several years ago I wasn't too concerned about the rods ability to hold up to the runs of this smaller Carp. After returning this fish I strike into another Carp, a Mirror Carp, this time weighing 5lb. At this time I was only using 3lb breaking strain Maxima line and was starting to think that I should have put my 5lb spool on but before I could change I struck into another fish, this time a 1.5lb Tench. Looking at the water I could see the feeding bubbles of a few Carp in my swim and decided that now should be the time that I swap to 5lb mainline. Big mistake! I guess that after 10 years in my loft followed by two reasonably powerful fish that the rod had been weakened because as I was threading the new line through the eyes of the rod *SNAP*!! The tip of my rod, the top two eyes, had snapped off. Apart from the fact that I was absolutely gutted to break what was my favourite and the best rod that I've ever owned and not to mention the fact that it cost me £120 when I bought it, it now meant that I needed a new rod. The question was, which rod?

When I 'gave up' fishing 10 years ago in terms of float rods there was pretty much just two types, match rods and generic float rods. Match rods where designed for match fishing where you were needing to pull out silver fish quickly, hence the soft action, and float rods where really just general purpose and a bit of a 'jack-of-all-trades'. Ten years later and rods, amongst a lot of other gear, have changed quite a bit and now we have 'Power Match' rods which are designed for todays 'commercials' (commercial fisheries that are primarily stocked with small to medium sizes Carp and where also something that didn't really exist 10 years ago). I did look at some of these Power Match rods like the Daiwa Spectron 13ft Extra Power Match Rod and the Preston Innovations Sentient 13ft Float rod but at nearly £200 I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to this kind of rod when I did also want to occasionally do some 'Silver fishing'.

Whilst looking around for rods I came across the John Wilson Avon Quivertip Rod which was actually a rod I had wanted when it first came out well over 10 years ago. The thing that I liked about the rod back then and that I liked again now was that it could be set-up as 12ft or 13ft, came with 3 insert quivertips that were suitable for everything from shy Roach to powerful Barbel and had a float rod top section that could handle Carp and Barbel yet still capable of hooking Bream and Roach without bumping them.

At £70 and basically being 2 rods in one and that it can handle reel lines from 3lb to 8lb meant that it was pretty much a perfect choice but how would it actually perform?

I decided to take the plunge and ordered one and when it arrived I was reassured by it's build quality. Whilst the quality of the Carbon isn't quite as good as that of higher priced rods you would probably have to spend double the price to get any noticeable difference. The reel is secured by screwing the bottom end of the butt of the rod which means that there is no chance of the reel just dropping off when fighting a powerful fish and at both 12ft and 13ft the rod has a nice through action. The first time I used the rod it was immediately obvious that this rod was more than suitable for today's commercial waters. When using my old rod I was often loosing fish because I wasn't able to set the hooks properly due to the very soft action but with the Avon Quiver this was not a problem at all and my first fish was a 4.5lb Common Carp that was easily controlled and brought to the net.

The rod comes with 3 quivertips a 1.5oz, 2oz and 2.5oz. I haven't yet used the 2.5oz one but was able to detect shy Roach bites using the 1.5oz tip and the 2oz one was great when fishing for Chub on a fast flowing River Rother and casting anything from a small blockend feeder to a large open end one filled with groundbait was easy and, most importantly, accurate. All in all I think this is an excellent rod and is incredible value for money. The only criticism I have of this rod is that personally I can't see many times I would want or need to use it at 12ft and so am always using the 13ft extension that sits between the butt and first section.