Fly Fishing In The UK and Europe

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Snowbee Travel Rods

Pete Sutton (APGAI) and Terry Lawton have tested two four-piece Snowbee travel rods, one 9’ and one 10’.

XS-P10016: 9’ #5 weight four-piece travel rod

This rod certainly looks the business and is bang up to date with current trends being a 9’ #5 weight four-piece travel rod. I tested it using a Rio Windcutter #5 and a Scientific Anglers XXD #5, writes Pete Sutton.

This rod feels light in the hand and did everything asked of it, performing well at short and long distances with both lines. The action is nicely progressive and there is a reasonable amount of ‘feel’ so the rod is quite easy to use with no peculiar quirks or idiosyncrasies to be accommodated. I ran it through the usual gamut of roll casts, switch casts, slack line casts, aerial mends, curves and hooks and found no reluctance on the part of the rod to perform any of these. When testing for distance I found no difficulty in casting consistently to distances of about 90’, which should be more than enough for most fishing situations.

As Pete has written, this rod does look very good and the build quality is much better than the Zircon rod that we tested last year. A 9’ 5# rod is an excellent all-round trout or grayling rod, particularly for anyone who travels and fishes a wide range of river types and sizes.

I was able to spend some time fishing with this rod and it performed very well. The size of river that I fished – and the size of fish caught – were not big enough to need me to push the rod to its limits. But it did everything that I asked of it.

Having mentioned the Zircon, I would find it quite difficult to choose between the two. Without casting both rods side by side, my memory of the Zircon is that it has a slightly more progressive action that I prefer but against that, it is a three-piece rod which is less convenient than the latest XS-P.

The XS-P 9’ #5 weighs 90g/3.2oz and has a recommended UK retail price of £220.

XS-P 10’ #6 weight four-piece travel rod

This rod is a longer and somewhat more powerful version of the nine footer and it has a similar action and performed in a similar manner although, as always, the extra length is noticeable as the weight of the line and any fish caught exert more leverage against the hand, wrist and arm. Testing this rod corresponded with a visit to Ravensthorpe reservoir for a day’s fly fishing for trout from a float tube and although it wasn’t really a day for floating line work – and the only # 6 weight line I had was a floater - I did succeed in catching one rainbow of about two and a half pounds. The rod performed well from the float tube and whilst a float tube is not the best platform for long casts - truth is they are rarely necessary, especially with a floating line set up - I found that I could cast the whole line without too much effort. All in all, this is a very decent rod.

To sum up I would say that both rods are very good indeed and I am sure that most buyers would be very pleased with their purchase in either case. I am not sure that I like or approve of what seems to me to be ‘imaginative’ labelling but that’s marketing I suppose. Are they as good as the best rods costing about twice as much? No, in my view but I am sure that most buyers will hardly notice the difference.

In my opinion, writes Terry Lawton, rods of line weights up to, say, five, can be considered to be almost an extension of your casting arm and hand. But once you get to #6 and above, rods become much more of a casting tool and take on a different persona. Although most of my fishing is done with light-line rods, this 10-footer is a very nice and pleasant rod to cast and fish with. For anyone who fishes big rivers and stillwaters, the rod would be just the job.

This rod has an extra mushroom fighting butt. Both these rods are supplied with cotton rod bags and hard tubes.

The XS-P 10’ #6 weighs 132g/4.7oz and retails, in the UK, at £260. This rod is the longest four-piece and there is a #7 and an #8 available for those who want a heavier line weight rod.