There is a lot of choice in today’s fishing tackle market with many companies offering equivalent products for the same purpose. Many of these have been born out of frustration with other companies’ products design flaws; although many of them work well, anglers always have there own opinions on how things should be. The end result is that different companies design the same products to act reasonably differently. Thankfully for the average angler this gives us plenty of choice to make our own mind up on which one we like best.

One of the great things about fishing tackle is that everyone has their own way of setting up , we all do something different in hope to gain that edge over everyone else on the complex they are fishing.

There are several tackle companies that compete for our business in the fishing tackle market, in particular you have Korda, ESP, Fox, JRC, Rig Marole and to be fair many more that would take to long to list. I want to look mainly at the range of stuff developed by the guys at Korda and ESP.

Korda have been instrumental in the growth of Carp Fishing over the course of the last few years, the advertising that they put behind their products and the effort that goes into testing their products is second to none in my own opinion, I was chatting to Damo and Danny from Korda at a recent trade show looking at the new products that they have just released and I was totally impressed by the passion that these guys have. They will literally take a part of their angling that they feel isn’t optimum and design a product that will meet their needs. Unlike many other markets where a manufacturer will build a product to meet demand, Korda create a product to produce demand. The fishing tackle that they produce is a neat range of equipment that all fits together well and works as it should.

The main competitors to Korda are ESP (Drennan) who with names like Terry Hearn behind them also command a large percentage of the fishing tackle market. Terry is obviously well known in our little circle of the carping fraternity. Whenever I read stuff from Terry I never fail to be impressed at the effort that he puts into his angling and has without doubt a very impressive collection of photo ‘s to back up his knowledge. ESP products have a very good reputation among the hardcore anglers as being the best on the market, many of us believing things like intermediate sized hooks can make all the difference when neutrally balancing cork pop ups, or when using leadcore making sure it is ESP as it is classed as the best on the market.

With these two companies directly competing for our business the consumer is spoilt for choice when it comes to nicks and nacks for our fishing delight. Many of you will already sit in a particular camp where you feel happier with one companies products, but to those of you who are hardcore fans of one or the other, be aware that developments are constantly changing the face of fishing tackle and I would strongly recommend a trip to your local tackle shop to check out what the other is up to! You may be pleasantly surprised.

Another company that I have been impressed by, possibly because of their innovative thinking , is Rig Marole. These guys seem to have been quite underrated in the fishing tackle trade as far as the general public seem concerned. I personally have been fishing with their new fluorocarbon over the last month or so and I have not been as impressed with a hooklink for several years, time after time I have seen fish fought successfully through pads, weed, snaggy areas and at long and short distance without a single failure. The bit that I love the most about the hooklink is the ability to straighten the kinks out without damaging it! Very impressive and a big thumbs up to the CamH20. Another one of the products that I have been impressed with, well two in fact is the rig tubing and hydrolink. Hydrolink has put a nice spin on the traditional coated braid that we have been accustomed to over the last few years, hydrolink reverses the process and has the braid on the outer and a strippable inner, this has proved a real hit with fans of hinged stiff rigs. The tubing, although a touch expensive, is also a very good idea, when leadcore simply isn’t an option you need to fish with a tubing that serves the purpose of fish safety but also hugs the bottom much much better than standard rig tubing. This is due to a tungsten inner that weighs more than leadcore helping keep the tubing tight to the bottom reducing the chance of spooking feeding fish. Oh and I forgot to mention its ridiculously easy to thread!

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