“Guru” Commercial Match Range

Guru are a new start-up company that are about to take the commercial match scene by storm with the new range of dedicated products, designed to be effective rather than gimmicks.
Fronted up in the media by top commercial match anglers, Alex Bones and Steve Ringer, you can be sure that this range is going to be the business!

UKMA sat with Steve Ringer at a recent UKMA organised match, and Steve was happy to show us some of the products in the range. Enter the Guru…..

Guru Method & Pellet Feeders

With so many variations of method feeder available on the market nowadays, the brains at Guru sat down and basically started from scratch, taking in ideas from their consultants to develop what looks to be the ultimate commercial match feeder range.

The Method feeders have had a lot of thought put into them that it is blatantly obvious that they are not just a rehash of another manufacturer’s product.

The first thing on the Guru Method Feeders that stands out like a sore thumb, is the small “table” that is situated on top of the four vanes that the groundbait moulds to. The “table” is perfect to hold the hookbait in place securely without fear of the hook being pushed around one of the vanes when burying the hookbait into the groundbait. A simple idea and UKMA is amazed that it was not thought of before! The flat design of the feeder means that the lead side of the feeder will always be on the bottom leaving the bait accessible to the feeding fish. There are two types of the Method Feeder – inline and Elasticated – and both have identical bodies with the inner tube being the only difference.

With the straight Inline version, the plastic tube has been kept as thin as possible, but is rigid enough to enable easy threading of line through it. The tube is finished off with a very small preformed rubber cap that streamlines the whole setup and helps to eliminate tangles if the bait is not buried.

With the Elasticated version of the feeder has again had some thought go into it. The elastic running through the tube is of the hollow type and does not perish quickly unlike solid elastics. The clever part of the feeder is the mainline connection. Simply put, Guru have used a piece of bent wire to create a hook that can be pushed over a loop and covered with the specially designed end cap. This enables super fast changing of feeders to save vital seconds in a bagging situation. Hooklinks are connected to a smooth ring tied at the opposite end of the tube.

Guru Tackle have also designed a dedicated Pellet feeder that allows larger pellets to be dampened and pushed gently into the feeder for deployment into the swim. The frame will hold a very large pinch of pellets and the centre tube setup is exactly the same as the method feeders (which allows quick change between the two designs if required on the day.
All in all UKMA look forward to putting these feeders through their paces.

Other Guru Items to look out for

Also within the Guru range are a few other really nice additions to the market of existing products that have been changed to suit the match angler. The first is a proper pair of SHARP scissors. There is nothing worse than trying to neatly cut tag ends off knots, only to find that the mono is crushed before being cut due to “sharp” blades actually being blunt. The Guru Rig Scissors look sharp enough to cut cleanly through all diameters of mono’s or fluorocarbons as well as braids.

A couple of nice changes have been made to the baiting needles with regards to the handles. As well as having a flat disc area for easy grip, the end of the handle has been recessed to enable easy pressure to be placed on it by the anglers thumb without feeling uncomfortable. The two needles that UKMA looked at were the Speedmesh needle – which has a gated point specifically designed for pulling hooklinks through small PVA sticks, and the orange handled baiting needle that has a round profile, with a sharp point and safety barb setup. This type of needle can be easily pushed through harder baits such as boiies without splitting them as well as use with soft baits. These will also attract a lot of attention from the specimen anglers as well.

The Guru PVA system is a radical design change from the existing Korda specimen system. The first thing that stands out is the packaging tube, which has the cap thread just over halfway down the tube. The inner loading tube that the PVA itself sits on, has also undergone a radical change in that at the loading end, a “scoop” has been moulded onto the tube for quick loading of bait from a bowl or bait box. This is something else that the specimen anglers will also pick up on. The PVA refills are have also been repackaged from the specimen side in that they are supplied on small spools that have a rubber seal around them to stop the PVA mesh from spilling off in storage. This also allows neater storage in seat box drawers.

The swivels in the range are supplied in the sizes to suit the match angler, and every attention to detail has been looked at. All components of the swivel have been coated in a matt “stealth” black coating to stop glistening in clear water – something that other match orientated swivels has been missing.

Korda have also released a dedicated feeder reel line for the commercial angler in Drag-Line. The line is very supple as well as being highly abrasion resistant. UKMA have not yet used it in an angling situation, but looking at it on the bank (and seeing Steve Ringer out casting all the other anglers in the match using it!) it certainly looks to have ticked all the boxes! One thing that UKMA did like is that the stated breaking strain to diameter on the spools are correct and not over or understated to try to sell more.

Now for an item that impressed us at UKMA a lot. The Guru Micro Lead Clip System. All for too long, anglers have thought that lead clips are lead clips, but for the commercial match angler this is not the case at all. Until now none have really been right for the match angler. The Micro Lead Clip is essentially a miniature lead clip system that allows quick change of lead or feeder when fishing. Essentially used in specimen angling for safe ejection of the lead from the setup should it get snagged, the larger clips are generally too solid in grip to drop the much smaller size weights that the match angler uses.

The supplied swivels click into place on the clips very well indeed, but the smartest part of the system is that both the clip and the tail sleeve are angled so that they fit snugly together but will allow lighter leads to be ejected should they snag. The micro lead clips are also constructed from a translucent dull brown coloured plastic, so match up to the coloured water that is present in most commercial fisheries.

UKMA was also lucky enough to be able to take a very good and close look at the new QM1 hooks. Designed specifically for lead and feeder fishing, the QM1 has been designed to help aid hooking of the fish and to alleviate the risk of hook pulls. The pattern of the hook is similar to the circle hooks that are used for sea fishing and commercial long line fishing, in that when the fish moves away the hook penetrates and stays in. The inturned point helps with this particular design. The eye has been out turned so that the hook sits nicely inline with the hooklength rather than kicking it over. We did comment that the wire is very thin but we have looked at other hooks with such thin wire that are stronger than some hooks using a heavier wire gauge. The points of the QM1 are surgically sharp, but we would have liked to see some sort of protection in the handy linkable box the hooks are supplied in to stop them rattling around and potentially blunting the points. We are definitely looking forward to putting these through their paces.

Keep an eye out in your local tackle shop for the Guru range of products.