Making up a steel trace

Today I'm sitting here planning my next trip. And dreaming about the BIG one. So i decided to build some steel traces and show you how I prefer them. I use 150lb nylon coated stainless steel trace wire, metal crimping sleeves and weighed non return slides. My hooks of choice is BANDIT Octopus 10/0 hooks. I like them cause of their sharpness but mostly because they are high carbon which mean if i break it of in a fishes mouth it rusts away really fast.






First I cut of a length of just over 800mm of wire. Too short and sharks will swallow it and bite off your main line. Too long and you will have difficulty sliding your bait through the waves. Using a metal sleeve I connect one end to the slide clip. Make sure its tight and not able to pull loose.



At the other end I slide two hooks on. Making sure to put the wire in from the back of the hook. Then I use a sleeve to attach only the last hook. The other one is now sliding between the clip and the hook. That is just so you can use different size baits. The fixed hook I normally hook into the bait fish's mouth and the sliding one through his tail.







There you go. Easily and fast you have a extreme strong shark trace. The little circle thing on the pic with the swivel on is the stop for the bait so it does not slide down to your sinker and get all tangled. You attach your main line on the swivel and sinker line on the ring. I use a 1mm leader line and a little bit weaker sinker line. If you get picked up by a fish and your sinker gets snagged it will break off and leave the fish on your main line.




For sliding I use a 14ft custom build graphite rod and a Daiwa Saltist reel.
This is the weights I'm casting out. I cast this as far as i can and pull on it till I feel that it digs into the bottom properly. Then I clip on my bait and slide it into the water. Slowly rocking the rod forward and back for a good few minutes to help it slide down.

Remember to sharpen your hooks!