Steve Lewis
Senior Member
Gents…
With my first foray back into piking for nearly 20 years, I’ve decided to change things up a bit and run some experiments.
None of you have asked for this, but I had my own curiosity, and thought that others may be interested.
I’ve already undertaken a test to try and form my own opinion about the twist vs. crimp argument. Noting that many experienced pike anglers prefer twisting, believing crimping to be for beginners only and not as strong as twisted traces, and myself finding crimped traces FAR easier, quicker and tidier to make, at the weekend I decided to sacrifice various wires and a few trebles to really put twisted and crimped traces through the test.
Wires used were:
Drennan Soft Strand (20lb)
Drennan 7 Strand (20lb)
Drennan Green (28lb)
Drennan E-Sox Super (24lb)
(I don’t use anything other than Drennan)
The test was simple – end treble tight in a vice, swivel end of the trace attached to a strong spring loaded tubular weighing scale, and pull to breaking point.
With 3 crimped and 3 twisted with each wire, the results were interesting.
In all but one case, both twisted and crimped traces broke around or just over the stated breaking strain. The one that didn’t was a crimped one, where the very end of one crimp was crushed down, and the edge of it obviously weakened the wire, and that one broke well below stated breaking strain.
The crimped traces all broke at one of the crimps, whereas the twisted ones broke randomly at some point along the wire, usually between the swivel end and first treble. Aside from aesthetics, this was the only major difference I could see between the two.
So, in my eyes, twisted traces offer no advantage over crimped, as long as you make sure to leave either end of the crimps uncrimped.
My next test will be a practical field test – double vs. treble hooks. Having read about so many experienced pikers moving away from trebles over to doubles (yet, ironically, double hooks are a lot rarer than they used to be…) in the last few years, and others saying that doubles are really only suitable for small baits (a point I’ve always found hard to understand given that, regardless of whether it’s a double or treble, with semi-barbed hooks you’re only going to be using the one barbed point to hook the bait), I’ll be using both side-by-side to see whether there is any noticeable difference – ease of unhooking, dropped bites, shaking the hook(s) off, etc etc. I will also trial a hybrid, where the first hook will be a treble and the end hook will be a double.
No doubt you’ve got your own opinions on all of this…
More results as I get them.
With my first foray back into piking for nearly 20 years, I’ve decided to change things up a bit and run some experiments.
None of you have asked for this, but I had my own curiosity, and thought that others may be interested.
I’ve already undertaken a test to try and form my own opinion about the twist vs. crimp argument. Noting that many experienced pike anglers prefer twisting, believing crimping to be for beginners only and not as strong as twisted traces, and myself finding crimped traces FAR easier, quicker and tidier to make, at the weekend I decided to sacrifice various wires and a few trebles to really put twisted and crimped traces through the test.
Wires used were:
Drennan Soft Strand (20lb)
Drennan 7 Strand (20lb)
Drennan Green (28lb)
Drennan E-Sox Super (24lb)
(I don’t use anything other than Drennan)
The test was simple – end treble tight in a vice, swivel end of the trace attached to a strong spring loaded tubular weighing scale, and pull to breaking point.
With 3 crimped and 3 twisted with each wire, the results were interesting.
In all but one case, both twisted and crimped traces broke around or just over the stated breaking strain. The one that didn’t was a crimped one, where the very end of one crimp was crushed down, and the edge of it obviously weakened the wire, and that one broke well below stated breaking strain.
The crimped traces all broke at one of the crimps, whereas the twisted ones broke randomly at some point along the wire, usually between the swivel end and first treble. Aside from aesthetics, this was the only major difference I could see between the two.
So, in my eyes, twisted traces offer no advantage over crimped, as long as you make sure to leave either end of the crimps uncrimped.
My next test will be a practical field test – double vs. treble hooks. Having read about so many experienced pikers moving away from trebles over to doubles (yet, ironically, double hooks are a lot rarer than they used to be…) in the last few years, and others saying that doubles are really only suitable for small baits (a point I’ve always found hard to understand given that, regardless of whether it’s a double or treble, with semi-barbed hooks you’re only going to be using the one barbed point to hook the bait), I’ll be using both side-by-side to see whether there is any noticeable difference – ease of unhooking, dropped bites, shaking the hook(s) off, etc etc. I will also trial a hybrid, where the first hook will be a treble and the end hook will be a double.
No doubt you’ve got your own opinions on all of this…
More results as I get them.