Over the years I have been through the whole range of material to make hook links from. When I started carping on the distant past we used mono and then quickly progressed to black Dacron which as I was fishing a clay pit must have really stood out against the bottom. Strange that in the 20 odd years since I started carp fishing that we have effectively gone back to mono with the surge in the usage of flurocarbon ( for which I myself am guilty). Anyway recently after having issues with other hook link materials from another manufacturer a friend suggested that I try cortex. I dutifully bought a spool from my local tackle shop and had a play.
As you can see it comes on a rather handy spool that is comprised of 2 plastic halves. This has the effect of sandwiching the cortex as it comes off the spool making over runs a thing of the past. On the rear of the spool ( not shown above) there is a cut out that allows you to see how much of the product remains on the spool, handy to check before a foray to the tackle shop.
The line it’s self is very supple but retains that stiffness crucial to ensuring that the rig is well presented. It is apparently available in various colours but I chose the sandy brown variant as I believe that it matches most of the lake bottoms that I fish vaguely well. Another thing is that many coated braids need a tool to be able to strip the coating back. This annoys me as it is my opinion that if you have a coated braid you should be able to strip it with your thumb nail, coretex matches this requirement perfectly.
As you can see from the pic above cortex strips easily with firm pressure from your thumbnail which is as it should be in my opinion. It is also worth noting that that material does not need steaming to make it lie straight. Other coated braids need a lot of work with the steam of a kettle just to straighten them out, not so with cortex just a firm tug and you are there.
Overall, really love Fox Coretex, it is a superb coated braid and really knocks the socks off of the competition as it is available in many different braking strains I will be using it exclusively when I use coated braid from both stalking to long range fishing and everything in between. Highly recommended.
The Masterblanker 