Korum Snapper Twin Tip 8ft Drop Shot Rod

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£49.99

Rarer than hen’s teeth, more in demand than Leonardo DiCaprio at a hen night, the Snapper is almost certainly the UK’s fastest selling drop shot rod.

If advance sales are anything to go by, this modest eight-footer could be big-fish brand Korum’s ultimate success story in the rod stakes.

So what makes it so highly thought of among anglers and tackle shop owners?

Obviusly its affordable price has a lot to do with it, and there’s added value in that you get not one, but two short (10ins) quivertips. The carbon version works best with payloads ranging from 5g-12g, while the lighter glass tip is recommended for use with 1g-7g, making it better suited to smaller drop shot soft plastic lures and their associated weights.

Having two separate tips on a single carrier top section gives the rod considerable tactical flexibility. This is something I was to appreciate as I put it through its paces on a bitterly cold day on a high and icy River Nene, near Peterborough.

The weather was bitter, even by Russian standards – but more of that later! Before telling you what our Soviet comrades get up to on a freezing mid-January day I should reveal more about the Korum Snapper Twin Tip Drop Shot rod.

The build makes a nonsense of its budget price. Quality fixtures all round include a lightweight reel seat that positions your fingers directly against the blank for maximum vibration and feel. The abbreviated handle is easy on the eye and imparts a nice sense of balance, as well as suiting single-handed conventional and underarm casts in tight spots.

The fully lined ceramic guides are braid-friendly, and I can’t see any angler wearing a groove in them. The all-carbon two-piece blank, with its black gloss finish, boasts a sharply progressive action that kicks in around halfway down the top section and retains more than enough grunt through its butt to set the hooks decisively – important when hard-mouthed pike and zander take the lure.

If I were to be really pedantic and picky, I could say that the blank is a fraction over-gunned for smaller perch and mini-pike and zander on canals. But fit the sensitive glass quivertip and it’s absolutely ideal for jigging a tiny drop shot lure around on an elastic and fluorocarbon leader.

In any case, this is a multi-purpose rod which, with its carbon quivertip fitted, is more than capable of throwing a decent-sized lure around for pike. I made that changeover after seeing a big pike swirl at my little drop shot lure as it hit the water and could immediately appreciate the rod’s much pokier feel. Sadly, the pike didn’t come back for seconds, hardly surprising given the colour and temperature of the water.

And so to those crazy Russians, who must observe the single most stupid custom known to man (and, on the day, a few women too). It involves taking off all your clothes, then jumping into the nearest freezing cold water.

They chose to do it while I was conducting this particular tackle test on the Nene, and Angling Times cameraman Lloyd Rogers and I were completely agog – we thought we were witnessing a mass suicide.

However, after several completely unwanted rescue attempts it seems we had stumbled upon Peterborough’s resident Ruskies taking part in their annual ‘freeze your bits-off’ day… to call it ‘mental’ doesn’t even come close!