Perhaps the most important part of your complete carp kit: the carp rig or the carp leader. These last few centimetres of your rig make the difference between catching and blanking. A good carp leader can make or break your day at the bank. Carp are masters of hook avoidance, if you ever watch underwater footage of carp feeding, you'll be amazed how often your hook bait is taken without actually hooking the fish. A good carp bait line pricks fast, hooks well and is of course strong and abrasion resistant.

Buy carp leaders

Luckily there are many good carp leaders on the market. Often called ready-tied rigs. Almost every serious carp brand has its own, often hand-knotted, rigs in the range. The variation is enormous.  Each angler prefers a different hooklink and on some spots the characteristics of a certain hooklink are requested. For example, an extra short or long hooklink, a longer hair, a rig for pop-up fishing, a rig of stiff material or flexible and so on. Popular rigs that many brands have in their range are for example the Blow Out Rig, Chod Rig, Ronnie Rig, Snowman Rig and the D-Rig.

Making carp leaders

Of course, it is possible to make your own hooklink, so you can fish your hooklink or rig exactly the way you want. Every part of the rig can be adjusted and this way you can perfect your rig. It is possible to choose a different size of hook, a different type of hook material, a shrinking tube or a line aligner etc. Tying your own hooklink is easy and a lot of fun. The satisfaction after catching a nice carp on your own line is enormous.