Making wire traces

I'm hopefully going predator fishing at the weekend and needed to make some new traces, so thought I may as well post the process up on here for all to see. Its pretty easy to do, and as well as giving you the freedom to make them the size you want them, it can save you a bunch of money over ready made traces, working out at under £1 a trace, even less if you re-use the hooks and swivels after the wire gets trashed by a fish!

Items needed to make a trace

You will need:

• Trace wire 
• Treble hooks
• Swivels
• Heat shrink tubing
• Wire cutters
• Rig puller

I use a coated trace wire as I feel its a bit friendlier on the fish. I also use semi-barbless trebles for the same reason, and to make unhooking that much simpler. I'm an electronics engineer by trade, so I use the same heat shrink tubing that I use at work for covering solder joints on wires, but I'd imagine the stuff you can buy in tackle shops is just the same thing (but with a higher price tag). For wire cutters I just use my hook cutters that I use to chop the hooks up in the event of a tricky hook hold (be it in a fish or in my hand!). You could use scissors, but I'd imagine you'll ruin them fairly quickly.

Making a trace:

• Cut off a length of trace wire, around 2 ft should be about right.
• Thread the wire through the eye of a hook, running parallel to the shank, leaving a tag end of about half an inch.

Attaching the bottom hook

• Fold the wire over back down the shank, then pass around the outside bend of one of the hooks. Make sure everything is tight and in place, and then whip the wire around the shank back up to the eye of the hook at least 5 times, and than place back through the eye (much like tying a knotless knot).

Attaching the bottom hook

• Cut a short piece of heat shrink tubing big enough to cover the hook shank, and slide it down the wire and onto the shank. Shrink the tubing down with a heat source (I hold it about an inch or 2 above the flame of a lighter, though a heat gun would probably serve better). Pull the rig tight and straight while the tubing cools to keep everything in a straight line.

Tidying things up

• Thread the second treble down the trace to the desired position (this will depend on the size of baits you use, in this case it was for a small roach for zander fishing, so the hooks were fairly close at around 2.5 inches apart), and repeat the same process as for the first hook.

Both hooks securely attached

• Thread a swivel onto the wire to about 15-18 inches from the bottom hook, and then pass the wire back through the eye of the swivel (as you would if tying a grinner knot). Twist the tag end around the trace at least 7 times. This can be done quickly by clamping a set of forceps onto the tag end and spinning them around the trace while holding the trace tight, though you can probably get it neater if you do it by hand. Snip the remainder of the tag end off close to the trace.

Attaching the swivel

• Cut a length of heat shrink tubing long enough to cover all the twists and half of the swivel, and thread onto the trace until only half of the swivel is showing before shrinking down (it just occurred to me you'll want to thread the tubing on before attaching the swivel if it isn't big enough to pass over the swivel easily!). Again pull the trace tight and straight while the tubing cools to help keep everything in a straight line.
• Trim the tag end at the bottom hook, and your trace is finished!

The finished trace

If you plan on popping your baits up off the bottom, you can add a micro swivel to what would normally be the tag end (though attach the swivel first before the hooks) which you can then use to "hair rig" a poly ball to the trace using some bait floss and passing a long baiting needle through the flank of the bait by the bottom hook, and out through the mouth. 

Pop-up trace with micro swivel for "hair rigging" poly balls

I apologise for the poor image quality, now that it gets dark early I had to shoot under artificial lighting which requires a slower shutter speed, and I obviously didn't hold the camera steady enough to get a sharp image. Hopefully they're still good enough for you to see what's going on...