Daiwa Hydrolastic and Preston Hollo elastics

I’ve used various elastic brands over the years and without doubt daiwa’s hydrolastic even though it’s pretty expensive is the one I turn to for my summer shallow fishing. 

Used in conjunction with my short stop kits with puller bungs, I find it unbeatable in the light orange (4-8) and white 6-10) grades.

When fishing shallow and you have fish competing up in the water you want a light stretchy elastic that will allow the hooked fish to swim away from the other fish so these fish are not spooked and scared off. Daiwa’s hydrolastic does this with ease. However the beauty of it is than it powers up quickly and even larger carp up to 10lb in weight can soon be landed. But the other advantage with hydrolastic is that you suffer from less hook pulls when using small hooks when fishing for F1’s as they have soft mouths. I fish most weeks of the year and it lasts longer than other elastics however double sleeving the dacron onto the elastic in these smaller sizes needs to be done and careful attention to the puller bead is needed and checked during the time the elastic is in the top kits. 

For the larger carp elastics I wanted to use cheaper brands as elasticating multiple top kits gets expensive with Hydro and when I first used Nick Gilberts Amber Core in the black and purple grades for large summer carp fishing I thought “that’s just the same as Hydro” it looked and performed the same but was half the price of hydro and the beauty of buying this from Nick it that you can buy it by the metre.  I used it for several years catching plenty of carp on it. It did the business, black for open water carping the purple for the margins or by snags. however I found you had to replace it more often and you couldn’t just buy it from the local tackle shop. You had to be organised and buy it online. I then tried Frenzee stretch elastic which did exactly that. It stretched for miles and I found it difficult to get control over large carp. The orange (14-18) was good but at 2.8mm diameter I found the elastic would rub over the puller slot and sometimes it wouldn’t retract properly and I stopped using it. 

So I turned to Preston Hollo next. I was impressed with the first couple to top kits I used the red 11h in. It was brilliant for summer F1 fishing and would cope with the odd larger carp and I quickly fitted my other top kits with 13h, 15h which are great for small carp and then the 17h and 20h for bigger margin carp. All these elastics have performed fine and I’ve landed plenty of fish using them. One point I will make though is when fitting the puller bead. Don’t just slide the puller bead down to the required length. Stretch out the elastic first and gradually slide the bead down the elastic being careful not the rub the elastic with the bead. I didn’t do this at first and I am sure I damaged the elastic as a brand new 15h elastic perished within a month and snapped at the puller bead once. But once these elastics have been fitted to my top kits they have generally out lived the other elastics I’ve used in the past, apart from the Hydro, but it’s expensive.    

So my elastic set ups are now Orange and White hydro in my shallow short stop kits for summer shallow fishing. 11h, 13h for F1’s and carp in the winter months when fishing on the bottom when you need to use longer top kits because of the depth of water. 15h for general open water carping and 17h and 20h for the margin lumps in the summer.