You will need some wire, two semi-barbless treble hooks, a swivel, some crimps, crimping pliers and sharp wire cutters or tough scissors to cut and trim your wire.

Cut 18 to 20 inches of wire, thread on a crimp, pass the wire through a treble hook and thread it back, well inside the crimp with perhaps 1/4" showing through.

Position the crimp around 5mm from the hook and squeeze it tightly using the crimping pliers

The crimp should be squeezed three times, making sure each of the depresssions line up like this.

Thread on your second hook and position this 2 to 3 inches from the first. Make up several traces with different spacings to suit a variety of bait sizes.

Hold the second treble in place and carefully wrap the wire around the base of the hook like this. Ensure the wire goes under the eire to the first hook, not over it!

Now tightly wrap the wire around the hook's shank 3 to 5 times and then, holding the loops firm with your thumb, thread it back through the hooks eye.

Complete the trace by attaching a good quality strong barrel swivel with another crimp as you did with the end hook. Now store the trace ready for use.

Use the best quality wire!

Quality brands of multi-strand pike trace wire is available from many tackle manufacturers including Drennan, Ryobi, Fox and Relum under the ET brand name.

They provide conventional 7 stranded stainless steel wire, with green or brown surface coatings and many now offer the multistrand (49 strands) ultra-flexible wires that can be made secure by actually using a grinner knot to fix hooks and swivels. They do also work with crimps.

A variety of breaking strains are available from 10lbs BS through to 33lbs BS, the heavier wires being the more practical for regular pike fishing, eg:20lbs BS upwards for uptraces, spin traces and hook traces!.

With these wires being so soft these days they allow livebaits to act very naturally and do not inhibit takes like the older styles of wire! No more dropped runs!

Top Tip-Always ensure you cut your wire with a sharp bladed scissors or wire cutters and do not let the wire unravel as it will weaken the resulting trace!

Top Tip- Do not set the crimp too close to the hook, it must move freely on the hook and do not crimp too heavily and on the ends of the crimp as damage to the wire may occur!