Trakker Tempest RS Brolly

There's a particular kind of UK carp fishing that doesn't revolve around multi-night sessions with a full bivvy, bedchair and the works, but still needs proper shelter from whatever the weather throws at you. That's the gap the Tempest RS from Trakker is built to fill: a brolly-style shelter that's quicker to get up and down than a full bivvy, but engineered with enough substance that it's not just a flimsy umbrella with carp branding on it.

The headline figures tell you a fair bit about where Trakker's priorities sat when designing it. Bare, the Tempest RS weighs 7.45kg, and once you add in the pegs, poles and the NXG carry bag it comes supplied with, that rises to 10.45kg. That's not a lightweight setup by any stretch, and if you're looking for the absolute lightest brolly to carry a long way to a far-flung swim, this probably isn't it. But that weight is clearly going somewhere, and it's going into build quality and weatherproofing rather than being wasted.

Internally, you're getting 140cm by 250cm by 210cm of space, which is a genuinely usable footprint for a brolly-style shelter. That's enough room to get a bedchair in comfortably, along with your tackle, without feeling like you're living in a tent built for one person and one rucksack. It strikes a sensible middle ground between the compact pop-up shelters some anglers use for short sessions and the full footprint of a proper bivvy.

The fabric is where the real engineering claim sits. Trakker use their Aquatexx material here, rated to a 25000mm hydrostatic head. For anyone not familiar with what that figure actually means, hydrostatic head is a standard measure of how much water pressure a fabric can withstand before it starts letting water through, and 25000mm is a genuinely serious number in outdoor shelter terms. It's the kind of rating that suggests Trakker have built the Tempest RS around coping with properly heavy, sustained rain rather than just keeping off a passing shower.

Getting the thing up is handled by what Trakker call the Rapid Knuckle System, working alongside a GRP composite hinge block. The idea here is straightforward: fewer fiddly steps between arriving at your swim and being under cover, which matters a lot more than it sounds when you've turned up in driving rain and just want to get your gear dry rather than wrestling with a complicated frame. A GRP composite hinge block, being a glass-reinforced plastic, is also chosen for being tough and resistant to the kind of wear and stress that a metal hinge working the same angle repeatedly might eventually suffer from.

One thing that's easy to overlook with any fully enclosed, heavily waterproofed shelter is what happens to the air inside it once you, your gear and possibly a stove are all sat in there for hours. Trakker have clearly thought about this with their Adaptive Ventilation system, which spreads six vents around the shelter. The benefit of multiple smaller vents rather than one big one is that you can manage airflow more precisely, cracking open what you need to cut condensation or heat without having to compromise on keeping the weather out elsewhere.

Inside, there are four internal pockets and two magnetic rod straps, which are the kind of small, practical touches that make a real difference to day-to-day usability on the bank. Pockets mean you're not digging through a rucksack in the dark for your head torch or bits of terminal tackle, and magnetic rod straps mean you can stow a spare rod safely and quickly without fumbling with buckles or velcro when your hands are cold or wet.

It's also worth flagging what comes in the box, because it affects the real cost of getting set up. Trakker include the NXG carry bag, Quicksticks and T-pegs as standard, which means you're not immediately having to budget for extra accessories just to get the shelter usable and pitched properly on arrival at the bank.

Where the Tempest RS won't suit everyone is in that overall weight and the inherent limitations of a brolly shape compared to a full bivvy. At 10.45kg fully loaded, it's a reasonable carry if you're walking any distance, and while the internal dimensions are decent, a brolly design generally won't give you the same ability to stand up fully and move around that a proper bivvy frame does. If your fishing regularly involves long multi-day sessions where comfort and living space take priority over setup speed, it's worth weighing that against what the Tempest RS is actually built to deliver.

For the angler who wants fast, reliable shelter that can genuinely stand up to bad weather without carrying a full bivvy setup, though, the Tempest RS reads as a well thought through bit of kit. The combination of a seriously rated waterproof fabric, a quick pitching system and sensible internal extras suggests Trakker have built this around real sessions in real UK weather, rather than just chasing a lightweight spec sheet.