We do a lot of slip float fishing for walleye and crappie. I have tried a lot of different brands of slip floats and bobber stops. What is your favorite brand or kind? I bought some cheaper ones this winter and had 3 come apart opening day. Hoping to get some new ideas or find something I may have missed or never heard of before. Hope you all had a good opener, walleyes were all short for us but we found the crappies in the evening and made up for it.
General Fishing Discussion
Best slip float?
5/8/16 @ 4:48 PM
Displaying 1 to 15 of 31 posts
I've tried many and my personal favorite is the Tackle Beacon, Lucky Jack bobbers. I can turn the light on and off when needed. Brass grommets. The way they sit I can tell when the terminal end ticks the bottom or weeds. They are also heavy enough and aerodynamic enough to make long accurate casts.
Thill pro series. I use both weighted and unweighted depending on how far I need to cast. I also insert a brass eyelet into the bottom tube to prevent the line from cutting into the plastic. They last me around 3 years, then the paint starts to crack and the balsa starts to chip.
I use two different slip bobbers for walleye and crappie...for walleye I primarily use the Walleye Stalker. These keep your line below the surface and sit low in the water when properly weighted, which minimizes wind drift and detects more subtle bites.
For crappies and panfish, I use the round Northland Lite Bite slip bobbers, which are offered in several shapes and sizes. They have a brass grommet which helps line slide through them and they are inexpensive but more durable in my experience than Thill slip bobbers.
I think this one has been mentioned before, but honestly I haven't found a better bobber, especially for the price. The one downfall on these is the paint tends to wear off on them, but it takes a while and the bobber isn't affected by the color, so I keep using it. I've been using these for about 20 years now.
perch chaser, I've used those bobbers. I don't care for them. I've had a difficult time having the line slip through the bobber, they get caught. Also those bobber stoppers I can never get to work. They break easily while trying to snap them together, and snapping them together is near impossible. The best bobber stopper I've found to use is just a plain old knot. Only problem is that it's permanent, so if you're fishing different depths you have to start all over, but they work every time. Otherwise, some of the strings work great, some not so much. I think the thinner diameter ones work better than the thick diameter.
These are the stops I use...best in my opinion. Don't slide or get loose and you can reuse them. Don't stick up off spool so casting is smooth also. Another thing I like is braided power pro for my main line. It floats so you can take up slack really easy on long casts and has no memory so it doesn't get so loopy. Then I go to a swivel with 8 lb mono with split shot and hook. Just a few things I do but bobber fishing is my specialty.
Interesting, I might have to give that a shot. I'm currently doing more dead stick fishing over deep water but hate retying my rods to get the bobbers off.
I have a few ESB's as well. They work nice but I still need a bead or the knots I use slip through them. I like the smallest material knots because they don't stick out as far on a reel to catch the line when casting. The thicker thread ones give me trouble at times. That also requires a bead with a small hole, I have some beads that the knot slips through as well.
Displaying 1 to 15 of 31 posts
