Pete Tyjas and Lewis Hendrie put the Hanak Alpen 4 in 1 through its paces.
Hanak rods are a familiar sight to many anglers on the competition fly fishing circuit and to those who want a specialist rod for nymph fishing at an affordable price.
The Alpen Nymph 4 in 1 is a smart piece of design that allows you to fish nymphs in a variety of different situations and river sizes.
The quality of the build is excellent and standards are high. It is a dark blank with an attractive reel seat.
The rod, as the name suggests, allows the angler to extend the length of the rod according to where you might be fishing by simply adding sections to it.
So, you start off with a 9 ½ ft rod and can add other sections giving you plenty of options so that your 9 ½ ft rod can also be set up as a 10fter, 10 1/2fter and an 11fter too. You can even switch between either 9 1/2 ft and 10ft or 10 1/2 ft and 11ft withough having to cut your flies off as they the section you add has no rod rings saving time and hassle.
I do just about all of my nymph fishing with a 10ft rod but was recently fishing a larger river and prior to trying this rod wished I had an extra foot to make things more comfortable. With the Alpen I could have just added a section.
I have written about the cross over between nymph rods and general trout fishing rods before and how the specialist nymph rods, to me, are often a stiff blank with a soft tip that is perfect for nymphing with long leaders but when I string a fly line through them it just doesn’t work for me. As a result I have looked at rods the other way round and have wanted something that will cast a fly line primarily that I can also use as a nymph fishing rod but more recently have been using either a nymph rod or a dry fly rod.
This was where the review got really interesting to me. Lewis and I set up the rod in its 9 1/2ft configuration and try some lines on it. It is rated a 3wt and he’d told me he had been casting a 4wt Rio LT on it which did work really well. We also tried a 4wt Rio Gold which was superb too.
As the rod is a 3wt we wanted to see how it performed and we tried Mike Barrio's Small Stream line. This is where the rod came into its own and at fishing range it was outstanding but we also wanted to see how the blank coped when we really wound it up.
We were amazed and really impressed. Although the small stream is a short headed WF line we were able, with hauling, to carry some seriously long amounts of line without the rod blank buckling in any way.
There is a black foam area where you put your thumb if you use the thumb on top grip. I liked this addition.
We were near to a small stream so we felt it was only right we tried to catch a few fish with it. We used nymphs with a long leader and the rod performed as I hoped it would. Sensitive enough to detect the takes and easy to fish with. I enjoyed using it.
The rod is priced at £290 in what I’d call the upper mid price range but you are getting a hell of a lot of rod for the money that allows you to have something you can use in a variety of situations and makes the cross over between nymph rod and something you can cast a dry fly with too. A real star.
More on the Hanak Aplen from Unique Flies
Pete Tyjas and Lewis Hendrie are fly fishing guides based in Devon
