I have been a fan of Continental style rods for a couple of years now, especially for my light fishing, for species such as Plaice and Bream. When I was asked to review the Poetica KW Torzite, for heavier work, I was a bit sceptical. When it comes to distance casting and heavier rough weather work, I have never felt that the standard fixed spool set ups have been up to the job, let alone the lightweight continental style rods.
The Poetica is the flagship of the Trabucco surfcasting range of rods and at almost £550 it would need to be. Does it have solid gold guides for that price, I hear you ask. Well no, it doesn’t, it actually has something even better. The blank is fitted out with the latest Fuji Torzite guides, which are made with a Titanium frame. This makes them some of the lightest guides on the market, but is also responsible for adding £150 to the price of the blank.
The lightness of the guides affects the way the blank performs during casting. The design of the guide allows for more line to be in contact with the guide when it is being retrieved. This spreads the load over the guide. Reducing pressure on one single point. This might not sound significant, but when you are bringing in a large fish through heavy surf, it can mean the difference between losing it to snapped line, or possibly landing a personal best fish.
It does however have a gold reel seat. That is a Fuji DNPS gold label reel seat, which is a very strong and firm fitting seat. I had no problems tightening or loosening the fitting over the months, even when it was wet.
Lets look at the blank itself. It is formed using CX-2 Nano Tek carbon, which is a super high modulus carbon with a low resin content. This makes the blank much lighter and responsive, than most blanks that are capable of the power you can generate in this rod.
But having power is nothing if you can’t see the bites. Trabucco have overcome this by creating a tip that goes from hollow carbon, through to solid, before being spliced onto glass fibre. This prevents the tip from collapsing during the cast and provides great bite detection, even on smaller fish.
The tip also has a luminous finish that is designed to be easier to see both during the day in bright sunlight and at night. To be honest the luminosity of it at night is not great and I would have prefered to see a more reflective finish.
Overall the finish on the rod is superb and it does look great. As far as the test of time goes, I can only comment on it over the 6 months or so that I had it. Despite it being heavily used on the beach and rocks, the rod looked as good as it did when I first got it. I looked after it in the normal manner that I do with all my tackle. It gets washed when it gets rained on and if I can be bothered to put it back in its bag after a session, then I would class that as me being carefull. There were no signs of corrosion at all, and even the finish had not dulled, which is a first for me.
The Poetica became a firm favourite for most of my fishing situations, whether that was on Chesil, fishing for Cod and Rays, or even Bream and Trigger fish, to fishing on Portland for Wrasse in very rocky marks. It has the power to get the fish up quickly and away from the snags, yet you still get the sport that the species has to offer.
They say you can’t buy distance, but with this rod I would disagree. I can hit the same distances with a simple of the ground cast with the Poetica, that I can using a full blown, down the butt pendulum on my Century Tip Tornado match; casting with it is effortless. It really comes into it’s own when you are punching a big bait out into 15 knot winds after a winter storm. You know the Cod are out there, but you have to get out past the pounding surf and putting out a whole squid is exactly what you can achieve with the Poetica.
It is not just a rod for big fish and heavy seas. I have used it to great success for targeting Plaice and Bream at long range and bite detection even from Whitting and Dabs is good. Although the rod is very powerful and can deliver great distances, the baits are not exploded by the force of the cast. Everything seems to be so smooth and effortless.
Personally I love the Poetica. Unfortunately it has gone back to Trabucco, to be passed on to the next lucky person to review it. Would I buy one myself? probably not, as I can’t afford the price tag, but if I could I certainly would. There is a bit of good news on the price, as Trabucco have created another rod called the Imperia it is the same blank as the Poetica, the main difference is it doesn’t have the Torzite rings and is a lot cheaper. More information can be found on both rods from the Trabucco UK site
A fantastic top of the range rod, that anyone would be proud to own. It copes with all fishing conditions, especially rough conditions where you need power to get a large bait out.
If you want to find out more info about sea fishing reels, check out www.myseareels.com
I also prefer light fishing and use Century fishing rods, I can feel that it's very good for our next consideration. Youfishing is a big online fishing equipment store where you can get Century fishing rods and blanks at discount prices.
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