{"id":640,"date":"2018-01-06T03:45:37","date_gmt":"2018-01-06T03:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/?p=640"},"modified":"2018-01-06T03:45:37","modified_gmt":"2018-01-06T03:45:37","slug":"round-3-entry-29-james-evans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/2018\/01\/06\/round-3-entry-29-james-evans\/","title":{"rendered":"Round 3 – Entry 29 – James Evans"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m the proud owner of Hot Torpedo Competition #5 serial number 15.\u00a0 Owning this rod has always been very special to me, not just because it\u2019s a great rod, but because of the way I acquired it \u2013 I won it at the first Sexyloops gathering that I attended in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.\u00a0 When I say \u2018won\u2019 I actually finished in second place in the casting competition, but Paul wasn\u2019t going to give the rod to himself for coming first!<\/p>\n

The format of the competition was simple; 4 outfits were placed in four casting lanes and you cast each one for two minutes, recorded the best distance and then moved on to the next lane until you\u2019d cast all the outfits.\u00a0 Once everyone had cast in the morning the outfits were changed (after a lunch break) for new ones in the afternoon and the process repeated, thus everyone had eight scores to compare.<\/p>\n

The fun thing about this type of competition is that you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re picking up and you don\u2019t get time to practice \u2013 2 minutes of casting is all you get during which you have to figure out how to get the best from the outfit you\u2019ve just been given.\u00a0 To make it even more interesting there were some \u2018peculiar\u2019 (or so I thought at the time) tackle choices, the #4 line on the rod marked #10 was particularly memorable.\u00a0 I must say I was astonished at how well this cast and was very pleased to record a distance of over 40 yards with it.<\/p>\n

I also distinctly remember thinking I\u2019d blown my whole competition when faced with a 55g salmon shooting head outfit in the afternoon.\u00a0 This was the first time I\u2019d ever cast one, and by that I mean a double handed fly rod \u2013 I\u2019d never felt the need to use one previously (I\u2019ve still never actually been fishing with one).\u00a0 As such, having my first ever experience of wielding a 15ft fly rod in a 2 minute distance competition, with no prior instruction, meant that I didn\u2019t do that great.\u00a0 However my performances with the single handed rods compensated and I scraped into second place overall.<\/p>\n

Since winning it, the HT #5 has become my go-to rod for reservoir trout fishing and summer carping.\u00a0 It\u2019s with one such carp that I\u2019m basing my entry into this competition, a monster of a fish caught towards the end of the summer.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how much it weighed (although some experienced carp anglers have given me their estimates), but I\u2019d be interested to know if anyone thinks they\u2019ve caught something bigger on the HT #5.<\/p>\n

Used correctly, the Hot Torpedo #5 has more than sufficient low-down stiffness to bully big fish away from snags and overhanging trees, plus a very responsive casting performance that makes it a pleasure to sight cast with all day.\u00a0 I should note that I\u2019ve also won a number of BFCC #5 casting competitions with this rod, recording many casts over 120 feet in doing so.<\/p>\n

So there you have it, I\u2019m using a rod I won to try and win another one, with a big fish and some long casts thrown in for good measure.<\/p>\n

Cheers, James.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m the proud owner of Hot Torpedo Competition #5 serial number 15.\u00a0 Owning this rod has always been very special to me, not just because it\u2019s a great rod, but because of the way I acquired it \u2013 I won it at the first Sexyloops gathering that I attended in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.\u00a0 When I say … Continue reading “Round 3 – Entry 29 – James Evans”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":645,"href":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sexyloops.com\/htoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}