Kryston Surprises!

The title to this article may be a little strange, but there are a lot of anglers out there that may not be aware of some of the highly usefull products that Kryston have in their range. All of these items are part of the UKMA armoury and we think do help with putting extra fish on the bank.

We don't believe in the "secret squirrel" culture that is present in a lot of carp angling, and as we have been told by several high profile anglers - "there are no secrets in carp angling any more".

Our findings of these products are those of at least several years of actual usage and we are still using the products today - which gives testament to how good they are actually are.

Kryston Drop'Em

We don't think that there are many anglers that have not heard or used Kryston's Heavy Metal Putty in one of its forms or another. A lot of anglers think that because they already have a putty in their armoury that they don't need to carry another type, but this could be hindering anglers rather than helping with saving a few quid.

When you open the tub containing the Drop'Em putty, the first thing that you notice is that the block is a lot firmer than Heavy Metal. This is because Drop'Em is more like a tungsten wax rather than an easily maleable putty. Due to the firmness of the Drop'Em, it does take a little bit of extra work to attach it to the hooklink to help pin it down, but it sticks to the hooklink like the proverbial "mess" to a stick. Unlike softer putty, Drop'Em does not move on the hooklink unless it is actually under pressure and will not fall off on the cast. Running Drop'Em along a braided hooklink (under tension) will cause small pieces of the putty to adhere to the braid and turn a neutral or floating braid into a sinking material. We also use small "mouse droppings" of Drop'Em as anchor points to fix Heavy Metal for pop-up usage. Using Drop'Em instead of a split shot or a float stop means that less putty is then required to balance the pop-up.

Before Drop'Em came to the market, I was using another Kryston product (sadly now discontinued) in Magma, which was a liquid 'putty' to place mouse droppings of weight along the hooklink to sink it (I am talking almost 20 years ago when a lot of anglers weren't worried about having the hooklink pinned hard to the deck). I believe that using Drop'Em (after the demise of Magma) has caught me fish when other anglers have been struggling on some of the hard waters that I have fished over the years.

Drop'Em has a permanent place in the UKMA team armoury and we are certain that if you make a place for Drop'Em in yours, you will put extra fish on the bank.

Kryston Driftwood

Driftwood is another product from Kryston that I have been using for a number of years, for reasons unknown to us it was discontinued for a while, but Kryston have now bought it back to the market for 2010.

When I am stalking fish that are feeding on the surface, I don't like using a controller unless I really have to as I find them intrusive and can spook wary fish (generally what I am fishing for!). When Kryston launched Driftwood to the market, it was a product that instantly caught my eye and I had to pick up a pack to try it out.

Driftwood is a floating putty that is intended to be moulded around a swivel, leger stop or float stop on the line and takes the place of a controller for close in floater fishing work. One of the problems I used to suffer when stalking fish feeding just out of the margins was that a mixer was not heavy enough to freeline and keep control of should a breath of wind spring up. I was literally pulling my hair out constantly mending the bow that a breeze had created and usually ended up pulling the mixer around in an un-natural way. I found the solution to this by using Driftwood. By moulding a walnut piece of Driftwood onto the line (I use a large sliding float stop as an anchor point), I was able to easily flick a mixer out 20 yards with no disturbance upon hitting the water, and the fish didn't spook away. Having the Driftwood on the line also meant that I could mend the line without moving the hookbait too much as the Driftwood became the "anchor point" rather than the hookbait. We have all done it when surface fishing in trying to straighten the line only to pull the hookbait away from a fish that was just about to take it!

These products may only be small items, but they are very important to me, and some of the others on the UKMA team are also taking note. I certainly don't go fishing without these in my possession.

When we come across other surprises that anglers may not be aware of from the Kryston range they will be added to this article, and I am sure that there are quite a few that anglers will find extremely useful.

I would like to apologise to the anglers that wanted to keep these little advantages to themselves, but "there are no secrets in carp fishing".