Cut-resistant fabric
Also called puncture resistant glove, fish handling glove
Woven material, often with hard particles bonded into it, built to resist a blade, a tooth or a spine rather than to insulate.
Pike and musky have teeth that will open a hand. Catfish and bullhead have spines. Walleye have both teeth and sharp gill plates. A handling glove uses a tight weave, often with steel or glass fibre in it, to stop those from reaching skin.
It is rated on an industrial scale from A1 to A9, though fishing gloves rarely quote it. The relevant point is that a cut-resistant glove is thin and offers no warmth at all, which is a different product from a winter glove.
It is also the right glove for filleting, where the hand holding the fish is the one at risk.
Cut resistance is not puncture resistance. The same glove that stops a blade sliding across it will do very little against a catfish spine or a hook point driven straight in, and no fishing glove on the market is proof against either.
Keep one cut-resistant glove in the box for handling toothy fish and for cleaning them. It does not need to be a pair.
Related terms
Where this comes up
The guides that use cut-resistant fabric and show it on real gear.
Cut-resistant fabric is one of 206 terms in the glossary.
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