Sliding treble

[Colin Brett]

Perhaps they have

 

I cant condone any method for catching pike that would put two trebles side by side hooked into a pikes mouth.???????????????????? There is also the possibility of missing fish if the pike picks up the top non fixed treble and moves off. It could move 4 or 6 inchs before resistance is encountered when the sliding treble hits the bottom hook and that could be the difference between banking a fish or not. Some big fish only move 6ins after taking your bait, they don't all run off as the jacks do to avoid the big pikes dinner and so you might not get any indication on your float/drop off/alarm, if that was to happen then you've got a deep hooked fish to deal with.

 

If both hooks are secured to the wire then both hooks can connect with the bony mouth , doubling your chances of a secure hook hold

You've lost me??

 

Traces have nothing to do with bite detection, do they??

The fish picks up a bait whether it has two hooks on the trace or not. The sliding treble only slides under the striking pressure it is not running loose on the trace, so whether the pike latches onto the top treble is irrelevant. As long as one treble is in the mouth you should get a hook up and if it's the top one the chances are you will get both trebles engaged. If the hooks are fixed and the top treble is taken the chances are the bottom treble will end up caught in your net not in the pikes jaws. As for having two trebles side by side, what difference does that make, only better hooking in my mind. Please bear in mind fish do not feel pain.

 

Colin

[slodger]

I wouldn't like to dis anything Bill Chill does (Respect!!) but I've used and discarded a sliding treble arrangement many years back because it has the tendency to slip on the inertia of a stiff cast. (Which leaves the bait in a poor curved shape for the pike/zed to swallow.) Worse still, if it doesn't slip and both hooks engage in the preds mouth, The gap between the two hooks will close under the strain of playing the fish, and very often results in a nasty tear as the two trebles strive to come together through the preds mouth tissue.

[Peter Sharpe]

Personally, I think a sliding treble is a terrible idea and I always go to great lengths to make the upper treble as immobile as possible. A sliding treble is very likely to cause mouth damage and is will almost inevitably put kinks and coils in the trace. If allowed to slide, the top treble will act like a lever and put terrific force onto the bottom treble. Apart from causing terrible damage to soft tissue inside the mouth, it will also increase the likelyhood of losing the fish. If you use a link swivel, it takes only seconds to change the trace to one with differently spaced hooks.

[Brian Carragher]

Well there you go Anthony , you've heard some of the arguments for and against a sliding treble, so the balls in your court if you decide to use it or not.

Just got back in after a piking session today, out with my 10yr old son and we had two runs, one at 5.25lbs and one at 15lbs both caught with fixed top trebles and both rigs on size 8's.

I have a lot of faith in fixed trebles as I believe they give better hook holding capabilities over sliding trebles but as the man says "you pays your money and makes your choice"

[Russell Fitzpatrick]

like slodger i too have had debates on this one a few times!!

 

i use whats known as(to me anyway!) a dave horton trace, i have the top treble fixed,leaving a gap of around 5 inches or so i have teh bottom treble sliding,held in place by a trebel hook cover(fox) or silcone. below this i have a bead,the solid sea fishing type,dont know diameter but their big beads! i like to use bright colours red /orange/ yellow,anyway pass teh wire through the bead twice and crimp or twist as normal.

 

this trace has uses ,when using difrent sized lives and deads its is perfect also good for rigging pat baits vertical,i like teh convinence of using a sliding treble but it can ponly slide so far as its stopped by the upper hook,when i have used it it hasnt never got up to teh top hook always hooking up well below or sometimes not at all upper is hooked up.as to the slider coiling teh trace....carboflex mate! doesnt coil up n lasts for more than one fish love the stuff!

 

i do use fixed trebles mainly for big deads,cant explain why tho?

[Anthony78]

Thanks for the interesting views chaps. Having looked at the arguments I think I will stick to my fixed treble rig and just tie a new one to suit different sized baits. I have a fairly good hookup rate and cant see how this rig will improve that.

Thanks again

 

Ant

[Anderoo]

Sliding trebles can kink traces terribly. Also they can cause the bottom treble to hook outside the pike's mouth if they only have the upper (sliding) hook in their mouth when you strike. Fixed are much better.

[Steve Burke]

This is what I wrote in a previous thread on this topic:

 

"Having experimented with both fixed and sliding top trebles, I've come to the conclusion that sliding ones are more effective.

 

As has been mentioned, if just one of the points of one of the trebles hits bone and stops then none of the hooks will penetrate with a fixed top hook. With a sliding top hook there's an added chance that one of the hooks will move and penetrate into a softer area. I believe it was Barrie Rickards who pointed this out, although the rig was used in Victorian times.

 

Additionally, if a pike picks up a bait and both hooks are outside the mouth, with a fixed rig you're not likely to be able to hook it immediately. You have to wait for the pike to turn the bait and swallow it before striking.

 

With a sliding top hook one of the hooks can move and thus hook the pike on the lips, as Bill Chillingworth pointed out in "Tactics for Big Pike"

 

I accept that a sliding top hook won't always work better, but I'm all for increasing my chances in any way I can. After all, that one fish you miss could be the fish of a lifetime!

 

In practice though I haven't found that there's a huge difference. However, it does mean I can slide the hooks to the optimum position on the bait. It also means that I don't have to carry around a lot of different traces.

 

I suspect that one reason that a sliding top hook isn't more popular is that it can lead to kinks in the wire. This can be partially solved, as Leon suggested, by putting some tubing over the shank of the sliding hook. With the right size tubing you don't need to twist the wire around the hook, which is one of the causes of kinking.

 

What also helps is using 49 strand wire. This is much more kink-resistant than traditional 7 strand wires, and therefore safer for the pike. Although it costs more per metre, it works out very much less expensive as it just lasts and lasts.

 

Even if you do prefer a fixed top treble I'd still recommend that you use 49 strand wire for it's kink-resistance. It's so supple that you can simply knot the top treble in place, either at home or on the bankside."