Well where to begin, in today’s age we have an awful lot of carp fishing tackle and equipment to assist us with our angling. Many of these items have been born by people who have got fed up of throwing together old washing up bottles or sticks and mud in a true Blue Peter "here’s one we made earlier" style . One of those companies that have really been at the forefront of taking Carp Fishing Tackle to the next level is Korda, knowing the guys at Korda I know they will only put the time and effort into designing and testing something that will aid their fishing.

Bite alarms are probably the biggest development over the last few years. Many years ago when I started fishing for anything bigger than a gudgeon, I remember being sat behind my rod rests with a fairy washing up bottle top as a bobbin, waiting for it to hit the rod. Shortly after that some clever so and so created an alarm with a wire stick that when pulled tight made the most horrific buzzing sound shattering the perfect silence. This at the time was a massive development in Carp Fishing tackle as it opened up night fishing to a slightly less hard core angler. It stopped the necessity of sitting awake all night watching your rods, or putting a stone on your spool with a tin can underneath to bring your attention to a bite, or even tying line to your toe and trying to sleep. This technology has now been taken and improved many many times since, The top of the range system now, without a doubt in my mind, is Delkim, these alarms using a patented technology that uses a vibration sensor. If you look at this technically it will literally assist you with picking up bites that magnetic roller alarms wouldn’t, for instance, where fish kite on a tight line.

One of the other biggest developments in carp fishing tackle and equipment is rods, again when I brought my first Carp Fishing rods I spent over £250 for 2 rods which were Daiwa Pro Carp-X rods, which although they were good rods it was a budget rod at the time. Now days £125 per rod can buy you a top quality rod, for instance a Greys Prodigy, Nash Pursuit or the Fox Horizon rods. For the money you used to spend on a budget you can now get for under £200, 2 shimano rods, 2 shimano baitrunner reels with line and carry cases, and still have enough change to splash out on a couple of leads and a packet of hooks. The quality of these rods are still good enough for the average angler to take to there local ponds and dangle in the same way they would have done with their pro carp rods 15 years ago.

Bivvy’s and Bedchair’s have also become more affordable in today’s economic climate, I remember as a young lad looking through the magazines and merely dreaming of having £500 to spend on a bivvy and £250 on a bedchair. With the move of manufacture to china these items have now come down in price quite considerably, you can now pick up a cheap overnight brolly for about £40 and bedchairs from about the same. With these developments of carp fishing tackle and the price decrease it makes the sport open to a lot more people of different ages on all different budgets.

Carp Fishing now is a sport in itself whereas 30 years ago it was still one of those fish that were left as being "too difficult to catch" for your average Joe. We have a lot to be grateful for when we look at today’s carp fishing market, people who have no real experience of fishing can gain access to all the information they need to start carp fishing from scratch, and in a market that is in essence a consumer market, for not a lot of money.