Gardner "Twistiks"
Firstly why use rod rests as opposed to a pod? With individual rests you can set them apart in a swim so that you can occupy the middle ground. This I feel gives me a better and clearer area to play the fish in. You can align the rod top with the area that you are going to fish, with the rod pointing directly at the fishing area. This must result in less resistance to a taking fish. I think that separate rests gives a more flexible approach.
Over the years I have had all sorts of rod rests, some good and some bloody awful. They all work well enough when the ground is very soft, but come to grief when the ground is hard. The number of rod rests that I have managed to bend when trying to push them into hard ground is unbelievable. I decided that whatever else I needed from the rod rests, then they must have a screw thread for winding them into the hard ground. You could of course take a rubber mallet with you and use ordinary pointed bank sticks, but banging the rests in is not conducive to catching the very wary tench. I reckon that tench can feel the steps of an angler long before he reaches his swim, and any further vibration like the banging of rests with a hammer is like the kiss of death. I had a look in the various local tackle shops trying to find as many screw in rod rests as possible. I did find some very nice samples of stainless steel ones, but for the size and diameter they are heavy. If you want something really substantial in stainless, then they are going to be very heavy indeed. The reason for using stainless is that is is rustproof, but I have seen many stainless items that have a white powdery growth on them, which I assume is some sort of corrosion. The same thing happens to aluminium as well.
I have six Twistiks, four at 2 foot and two at 3 foot. The two 3 foot ones I use for pegging down the front edges of the Deluxe Brotel. The four 2 foot ones are my rod rests. The Twistik is a bit on the heavy side as you would expect from such a substantial piece of kit. They are made from aluminium tube, with brass fittings, and are in a deep shade of green. The outer tube is about 3/4 of an inch and the inner tube is about 5/8ths. The spiral that goes into the ground is machined from solid brass and is 3 inches long, which is the same length as the top brass collar. There are two large knurled brass knobs for tightening onto the inner, both screws have a nylon tips to them so that no damage is done to the inner tube when tightening up. There is a hole machined through the top brass fitting to accept a stainless steel rod which is to do the actual turning to get the rest into the ground. Once screwed into the ground to a depth of about six inches or so, they are as solid as a rock. When I am fishing for carp close to the water lilies I have everything tightened right down so that a taking fish cannot take any line at all. These super strong rests are well up to the job, and I have seen the rod bang round in an arc, or strain forward as the fish goes away, without it ever looking as if the rests were going to shift. If you are in the market for some new rod rests then I don't think that there is anything better on the market, and for about £11-00 each they are not too expensive. Mine are about a year old now, and apart from some scratches on the outside where they have been wound down into some stony ground, they remain in top condition. You have to remove the centre section to insert the stainless rod through the hole in the top brass collar, and I have had the screws drop onto the ground due to the fact that they have been loosened. I now unscrew them completely and put them into a pocket until the Twistik is fully wound into the ground and the inner section has been replaced. That way there is no chance of one of the screws becoming lost in the grass or mud. Because of the nylon tip on the screws, I have not lost any of them while the Twistiks have been in transit. The number of times in the past when I have taken bank sticks out of the quiver to find that a screw had come loose and is either in the bottom of the quiver or has mysteriously disappeared never to be seen again.
I have modified one of the Twistiks, by shortening it by about
9 inches. The reason that I did this was that up at the estate lake the
banks are pretty flat, and rather than have the rear rest extended to far,
or screwing the front rest in too deeply, I decided to cut the front one
down a bit. Easier said than done. What I had to do was to cut the outer
9 inches from the bottom, and then to make cuts back down the cut off piece
until I got down to the brass screw section, and even then I could not get
it out from the aluminium tube. I then got a small hacksaw and sawed gently
in a spiral until I could prise the brass screw part out. Next I drove the
brass screw back into the new end of the Twistik, then all I had to do was
to cut the inner down. I am really pleased with the result.