I have really enjoyed the 'What Rod' thread started by fin-nor. At the time of starting this thread fin-nor's effort has received 34 replies, brilliant, just what any message board needs.

Like most anglers I am always up for better gear and I am very pleased with the excellent rig making material to be found at Tackle Tactics. This is right up with the international scene, and gives us all a chance to not only use the best rigs, but also learn from the experts based in the European match fishing circuit.

Having handed out a couple of compliments, I am allowed to offer some brickbats, and this is something that impresses me not one bit. It would seem every rod manufacturer is intent on showing their product can send a sinker to the horizon, easily capable of 200 metres plus. Really? Pardon the expression, such a comment holds the same amount of water as kitchen sieve, it's bullsh*t.

Distance casting is a technique not easily learned, it requires education, a need to understand how the build of the rod works, it requires an understanding of the power ratio for the weight of sinker. Just in case you think I am out of kilter with general thinking, have a look at your neighbours on the beach and judge just how far they are putting their baits out from the shore. Few will hit 120 metres, many will not reach 100 metres, but there is nothing wrong with that as in many cases that is where the fish can be found.

I would like to get a matched pair of rods, preferably 15 feet in length, both with a fast action, a good test curve and perfectly at home casting a 3 ounce sinker. So I searched the websites, then when I had a few models in mind, I went to the ever reliable YouTube. I find I must now rephrase that ... for once YouTube or their subscribers have completely let me down.

Right, what's the problem? Well before I go into detail I am sure that you, like me, can simply pick up a rod and know by feel if that rod is for you. There is no easy way of explaining such a feeling, it's simply everything feels right. You then examine the rings, the winch fitting, where this fitting sits in comparison to the rod butt and other small details that are required to suit your needs.

Now let's go to YouTube. Virtually every clip by manufacturers and users are based around the rod's casting ability. I am not stupid, I doubt if any of the anglers on this site are stupid either. Of course a rod and reel set up with line only going directly to a sinker will cast a country mile when compared with a set up that has terminal end gear, complete with a fair size essential called bait. This is likely to knock at least twenty-five percent (maybe more) off the distance you can cast. What's more, what has distance casting got to do with fishing anyway?

On YouTube there are hundreds, if not thousands of clips showing rods and reels doing their stuff. There are manufacturers, designers and sales people showing the sensitive rod tip, it's bite detection capability, all extolling the virtue of how their rod will handle and subdue a fish.

Now you may be willing to believe everything these people say and show, I put this information on level par with a second-hand car salesperson.

I have a question, nothing too outrageous, why the hell don't these people take their new rod they are trying to impress us with, down the beach and show us the damn thing doing what it's supposed to do? Show me a rod handling a fish like our common Kahawai and I will tell by the curve in the rod, more importantly where that curve is, and that will reveal me more information about the rod than any sales pitch.

Show me a rod and reel with a normal end rig, perhaps a pulley rig, with a decent sized pilchard as bait, complete with a little bling. Let me watch the salesman cast from the shore and I can tell how the rod loads up, how the tip works under pressure, I can see what part of the rod generates 'the power' to put that end gear a 100 metres out. Now set the rod in a rod rest, let me see how it handles a grip wire sinker when wound into the sea bed, let me see how good it is for bite detection.

If someone wants to sell me a rod or two, and I am spending big dollars, I don't believe what I ask to be outrageous. In fact it's reasonably basic, even the used car salesperson is happy for me to have a test drive.

I am not in the slightest bit interested in distance casting, as someone this week put it so well, catching dirt. I am interested in fishing, pure and simple, all I want to know is if that rod will work for me and the only way for me to get an answer to my question is when someone actually loads a video onto YouTube and shows me. Not too much to ask surely?

It's all very well suggesting a shop has a rod you can test cast with. However, those test casts show you nothing on how that rod fishes, and isn't that what we are buying the rod for?

Comments very welcome but from an angler's point of view, you are the person shelling out the money.