About

After years of never quite finding the quality we wanted in stores and never understanding why offshore rigs are so expensive, we decided to do it better.

We manufacture high quality offshore rigs, by hand, in the USA.  You can learn more about how we source our components and quality-test our rigs on our Material Origins, Testing, & Care page.

When catching fish, you go through a lot of rigs and we aim to make it hurt a little bit less. Every rig is built by fishermen in the USA, not by machines or in overseas sweat shops. These are the rigs we use and the rigs you would make if you had the time and patience.

Ken and Alli started Cardinal Tackle in 2012 selling a handful of the shark and tuna rigs we've used ourselves for years. We were early adopters of circle hooks for shark fishing and our business grew when New York, Florida, and eventually most fisheries on the East Coast required circle hook shark rigs. Fortunately, we had been making them for years. We expanded into Land Based Shark Fishing at the request of customers and fine-tuned these products with the help of top fishermen in Texas and Florida to develop the land based rigs we sell today. Our family business has grown with the addition of our brother-in-law Nick and Cousin Isaac. All of our rigs are built in the USA, on our custom bench presses for shark and hand-crimped for tuna. We fish with what we build and operate under the assumption that every rig that comes off the bench may have our or your fish of a lifetime on it, so it better be perfect. We use only high quality components and perform regular break tests for quality control. This is the good stuff!

We love to fish and love making rigs so let us know if you don't see what your looking for or have a question about what will work best for your needs.

From left to right: Younger version of Ken & Alli each with a yellowfin tuna, Alli with a Big Eye that hit a spreader bar, and Nick with two stripers.

From left to right: Captain Frank (aka Dad) getting in on the action and the team catching yellowfin on the chunk with the youngest and cutest Cardinal Tackle family/team member joining the picture. 

From left to right: Releasing a Dusky and a small Mako on the line. (No more hanging shark photos. If you are going to eat them great, otherwise, take your pictures and let them go!)