The Best Fishing Crimping Tools for 2026

Most crimping tools turn up as a bare pair of jaws and leave the crimps as a separate errand. The Gardner Crimpit doesn't, and that's the single reason it heads this guide: it's sold as a set, so a rig can be built the evening it lands.

This is firmly the carp half of the guide. Gardner pitch crimping as a way to tidy and slimline a rig, doing away with large bulky knots and replacing them with a stronger, more rigid crimp, and they list the tool for booms, chod rigs and much more. That's the work it's cut out for. An angler making up wire pike traces wants one of the predator pliers further down instead.

The kit runs to ten 0.6mm crimps and ten 0.7mm, so there are two sizes in the box rather than the one-size-fits-all approach the buying guide above warns anglers off. A side cutter is built in, which Gardner rate for trimming large diameter lines and swivels, and there are large grips to lean on while the crimp closes.

The honest catch is where those sizes stop. Nothing in the box goes past 0.7mm, so an angler working 30lb-plus mono is out of range and would be better served by the Wychwood and its 0.9mm. Ten of each crimp is a starter's worth rather than a season's, and none of it is any use on wire.

Losing a small tool in wet grass at two in the morning is a fishing rite of passage. RidgeMonkey's answer is handles that glow brightly in the dark so the thing can be located again in low light, and between that and how much is loaded into the box, it earns its slot.

It arrives as a bundle: the Nite Glo tool, ten 0.6mm crimps, ten 0.7mm, and ten Rock Bottom Crimp and Knot covers, which RidgeMonkey say is everything needed to construct strong, neat loops for hooklinks and booms. The covers are tungsten, and that added weight helps sink and pin a rig down.

The method stays simple even by torchlight: slide the line through the crimp, feed it back through the other hole to leave the loop at the length wanted, line the crimp up with the right notch and squeeze. Two differently sized notches crimp 0.6mm and 0.7mm laterally, there's a line cutter in the jaws, and a locking clasp swings over to hold them shut. The overmoulded grip on the slimline handles is what lets the pressure go in without the tool slipping, and at 125mm long and 70g it lives in a tackle box without argument. RidgeMonkey flag it as particularly useful for stiff filaments and for rig making with dexterity constraints.

Two notches is the ceiling, same as the Gardner, so heavier mono past 0.7mm isn't catered for at all. The covers are RidgeMonkey's own, which is fine until an angler who already keeps crimps and covers finds half the bundle duplicating the tackle box. It's carp rig kit start to finish, so wire traces are the wrong errand for it.

A crimp with a sharp edge left on it is a trace that catches the net, and worse, a joint with a stress point built into it. Fox Rage designed these to compress crimps without stress or creating sharp edges, and that one line is what puts them at the top of the predator half of this guide.

So this is the wire side, not the carp side. Fox Rage describe it plainly as the tool for creating strong crimped connections on traces, which means pike and lure work. An angler after chod rigs and booms should be looking at the Gardner or the Wychwood instead, and getting that the wrong way round is an easy mistake to make and an annoying one to discover at the water.

The build is honest enough: high-quality carbon steel under a gunmetal grey finish, with ergonomic hard plastic handles done in easy-find bright red and black. That last bit sounds like marketing and isn't. A dark tool in a dark lure box is a tool I'll spend five minutes hunting for.

The catch is what the listing doesn't say. It names no crimp sizes and no separate sections, so unlike the Daiwa or the Drennan below there's nothing stated about matching a crimp to the jaws, which is precisely the sizing question the buying guide above tells anglers to ask. It's a plier for traces and nothing else, so it belongs in a predator bag rather than a carp one.

There's more than one way to shut a crimp, and PikePro's is the one that convinces me most. Rather than squashing the barrel flat along its length, the toothed jaws press a series of indentations into it as it compresses.

PikePro's argument is that those indentations grip the wire inside much more securely than compressing the whole crimp does, and having knocked up a few traces that way, the joint does come out neat rather than mangled. The tool is designed specifically for single-barrel crimps, and for creating a strong, neat joint with the PikePro wire range.

All of which places it squarely in predator territory: wire traces for pike and lure fishing, a long way from the carp tools at the top of this guide. Extra-strong steel construction is what PikePro credit for a perfect finish every time with minimal effort, and the non-slip handles count for more than they sound like when there's a batch of traces to work through and the hand is starting to complain.

Against that, it's a tool with strong opinions about company. Built around single-barrel crimps and PikePro's own wire, it works as part of a system rather than as an all-rounder, and the listing puts no sizes to the jaws at all. It does exactly one job, too: nobody is closing a 0.7mm carp crimp with it.

A trace rarely lets go in the middle of a crimp. It goes at the edge, where the metal meets the wire, and the Daiwa Prorex pliers are built around that specific problem.

Five pressure points sit at the jaws, and Daiwa's claim is that they guarantee an optimal crimping while preventing damage to the steel wire at the crimp edge. Steel wire is the giveaway here: this is a predator trace tool for pike and lure work, and an angler holding a chod rig wants one of the carp tools higher up the guide instead.

Two sections take differently sized crimps, which clears the bar the buying guide above sets out. A single one-size-fits-all jaw is the thing to steer clear of, and two sections at least means matching a crimp to a section rather than hoping. Daiwa call it a premium plier, the body measures 5.5 inches, and both handle ends are marked with self-luminous material, which does the sensible thing of making the pliers findable in the dark rather than promising anything cleverer than that.

Two sections is still only two, mind, so this isn't the tool for an angler running a wide spread of crimp sizes. Daiwa's listing is also thin beyond the jaws: there's little said about the handles or how much pressure it takes to close them, which the buying guide rates as one of the three things worth knowing. Carp anglers can skip it entirely.

Three crimp sizes, not two. That is the plain reason the Wychwood tool sits in this guide, and on the buying guide's own crimp-size test it's the one that goes furthest of the lot.

Wychwood reckon they were the original innovators who brought this method to market, and with the spread of materials now used for hook lengths they redesigned the tool to suit the modern angler. Their case for crimping in the first place is a sound one: rigs built to the perfect length without tying fiddly knots, and less of the line damage that comes with tightening knots down in heavy lines.

The sizing detail is what earns it the slot. It's supplied with 0.6mm, 0.7mm and 0.9mm crimps, and Wychwood spell out what each is for: the line should just fit into the hole, 0.6mm suits normal stiff materials like amnesia, 0.7mm is for thicker types such as 25lb stiff bristle filament, and 0.9mm handles 30lb-plus mono. The jaws are made specifically for closing carp crimps and flare the crimp at the edges to prevent damage to the line, they're stainless steel for strength, a side cutter is included, and the whole thing is sized to fit most tackle boxes.

The flip side of three sizes is three decisions, and a crimp a size out is a crimp wasted, so this one rewards an angler who checks line diameter rather than eyeing it. It's carp through and through as well: those jaws are cut for carp crimps, and a pike angler with a spool of wire needs the predator pliers in the other half of this guide.

Getting a crimp sat square in the jaws by feel is the bit that quietly goes wrong, usually on the trace that then lets go. Drennan's fix is mechanical rather than clever: slots cut to locate the crimp so it can only sit where it should.

Those slots are designed to locate E-SOX Slim Crimps for perfectly crimped traces, and Drennan's claim for them is the one that actually matters on wire, that it ensures the maximum wire breaking strain is achieved. A crimp is only worth doing if the joint holds what the wire holds. E-SOX is Drennan's predator range and traces are the job here, so a carp angler after a chod or a boom is reading the wrong half of the guide.

Two sizes of slot take different crimps, which clears the one-size-fits-all bar the buying guide sets out above. Construction is high carbon steel under a matt black PTFE finish, with a comfortable twin colour handle. For a tool this pared back, there's nothing on it that feels like it was added to fill out a bullet list.

The slots giveth and taketh away, though. They're cut for E-SOX Slim Crimps, so this sits happiest inside Drennan's own system, and another brand's crimps may not seat as cleanly. Two slots is a narrow spread next to the Wychwood and its three sizes, and it's wire only, so it does nothing whatsoever for a carp angler.