Made a small £2 EBay mistake (I think) buying a 9" baiting needle for deadbaits. I had one many years back that had a tight little spring loop at the end so you could drag a trace through a small deadbait to keep it nice and secure inside the bait, leaving a single or treble hook at your chosen part of the bait.
This one has no loop or notch to haul the trace through, it's just a plain hollow metal needle. The seller says the hook is inserted in the blunt end of the shaft, but it seems obvious(?) to me that there's no way you could pull the hook+trace through (hook first and against the bend of the hook) unless the hook was quite small and/or the bait was very big and soft. In any case, I'd guess that the hook would pull out of the shaft under the strain.
Any clues?
I'm tempted to just bend over the end into a loop, in which case a nice bit of straight stiff wire or cut off thin knitting needle would have done

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Push the trace through by using the needle, then put a hook, with a split ring, on the loop at the end. Personally I use a long baiting carpy thingy, the type used for making up long stringers of boilies. It works a treat, both with soft bodied shads and dead baits.

But the needle is seriously pointy. Not much good for "pushing" anything Think I bought a turkey, and I just went at it with hammer and pliers and have made what looks like a perfectly good baiting needle :cool:

Couldn't you have threaded the trace through the hollow tube of the turkey?

Sounds like it's not a pike baiting needle but a lugworm needle. The worm is threaded on to the needle, place point of single hook in hollow bit and then push worm around the bend and on to the hook.

Yep, I think that's it. Although the vendor sold it as suitable for fishy deadbaits. Ah well.

if its a hollow needle with point at one end could you not push point in through mouth down inside fish and out at the tail thread wire down the needle then pull needle and wire out from the tail then tie on hook a swivel at each end.