Which Hooklink - Part One - Coated Braids

Which Hooklink – Part One – Coated Braids
October 6th, 2008

Which hooklink? good question, I’m going to run a little mini series featuring the most commonly used hooklink materials. I’ll also discuss the accepted wisdom as to their best use.

Coated Braids

Coated Braids as the name suggests are supple braid hooklinks covered with a thicker, stiffer material usually a plastic of some description. Some good examples are:-

Sufix Camfusion Atomic Jelly Wire Super Mantis

These coated braids have a plastic coating. The coating can be stripped back to reveal the supple inner braid so that you have a stiff section running from the swivel towards the hook and a supple section near the hook. This is essentialy a combi link rig but easier to tie, which is the main reason coated braids were developed. Coated Braid Combi Rigs can be used with bottom baits or if you put some tungsten putty where the coated section ends, pop ups. Coated braids can also be used without stripping back any coating to produce a stiff rig with increased abraision resistance.

Cut your desired length of coated braid, decide how much coating you want strip and grip tightly with your thumbnail (if you have any).

Dig into the coating with your thumbnail and pull away till the coating is removed.

If you don’t have any nails get yourself a Korda Strippa Tool they strip away the coating quickly without damaging the braid, they’re brilliant.

korda Hybrid Stiff/Soft

Korda Hybrid Stiff and Korda Hybrid Soft differ to the above because they have a fluorocarbon coating which is both stiffer and heavier than the plastic coatings. Because of their inherent stiffness the Korda Hybrids need to be steamed over a kettle to straighten them and to bed down knots though this is extra work it is worth it.

There are lots of different combinations that can be tied with these hooklink materials, imagination being the only limit.

Best fishes,

John

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