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You're not alone in loving cork handles. I'm sort of betwixt and between in that, a few years back, I had my Greys Prodigys customised to suit me and my needs rather than having full-on custom built rods. The first thing that I insisted on was full Portugese cork handles which came out just perfect for me, all these years later I'm still loving them. I also had Fuji reel seats fitted, all of the eyes relined with PTFE which has the lowest coefficient of friction in the civilised world (possibly ) and slightly larger diameter tip-eyes. Oh, and rather posh brushed stainless butt caps. These rods are now fully mature (read "old") but I'm very fond of them and ain't looking to change them any time soon. Ian

I used to catch with it Pete. Wouldn't say I did amazingly well, but I was only an apprentice and a kilo of boilies cost me an arm and a leg so only two or three freebies went in with it I always had the float rod out as well which was my man source of fishing at the time. I saved for months to buy a carbon composite rod and a reel because I wanted to try carp fishing and then a kilo of boilies had to last about 6-8 weeks.

Yeah, this is almost the modern take of this classic rig, however using a light line hair from the bend of the hook, without the hair being a continuation of the hooklink which seems to make it stiffer, the light, long hair makes the point of the hook "heavy" and the hook is more unstable on ejection. Its similar to the very early hairs during their inception with lenny middleton the knotless knot/continuation of hooklink-hair is a relatively recent concept, the hairs were often lighter hairs tied seperatley on to the eye or shank of the hook. As the hooklink of the time was mono, dental floss hairs on mono links were one of the first hair rigs i ever used in the mid 90's The "hook bend hair" is relatively forgotten about as being "old" but it can work. It looks pretty "hookable" i think with a curveshanked hook, this would flip over and dig in really well.