New Use For My TUC Noodle

Just when I thought I couldn’t be any more pleased with my TUC noodle it goes and proves to be even more versitile than I had realized.

This past weekend I was crappie fishing a Mille Lacs area lake and as the evening turned to night the lower half of the water column lit up like a Christmas tree… Unfortunatly instead of piles of fish it was chalk full of plankton to the point were no matter how I set my sensitivity and target adjust there was no way I could see fish coming through let alone figure out where my bait was located. Not having planned ahead I had nothing more than a box of jigs and some bait… no bobbers whatsoever. Not to worry though as I tied on a pug bug with a waxie onto the end of my noodle and dropped it right into the middle of the cloud of plankton then just put it into the rod holder. Sure enough it didn’t take long and the dip slowly started to bend down and grabbing the rod out of the holder up comes a healthy crappie. Until now I’ve always fished with noodle rod in hand actively twitching my bait, but this worked so well that next time I’m going to leave the bobbers at home on purpose. The only problem is that now I’m probably going to need a 2nd noodle to be able to both at the same time

I do this as well Will, I actively jig a larger lure with the precision or QT and let the noodle almost act as a deadstick of sorts. While fishing perch it allows me to keep more lines in the water while fishing in the house and also gets the finicky biters. – QB

Try Tip Downs with a crappie minnow, you can set one out and see it from a distance if needed. We use them at night and they work great. We also add tip up lights to them, the HT omni light, it lights once the tip down goes past horizontal.

http://www.flyshack.com/DisplayItem.aspx?ItemID=103111&src=froogle&gclid=CP3-rqfy7LsCFTDhQgodjG0AuA

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Try Tip Downs with a crappie minnow, you can set one out and see it from a distance if needed. We use them at night and they work great.

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I’ll second this. Got some from Nutz and now I hardly have time to jig. Usually chase tip downs all evening.

The TUCR Noodle is my go to deadstick rod for eyes and has been since I bought it last year. Plenty of backbone for average sized walleyes. Definitely want to upsize though on lakes with good trophy potential.

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Try Tip Downs with a crappie minnow, you can set one out and see it from a distance if needed. We use them at night and they work great. We also add tip up lights to them, the HT omni light, it lights once the tip down goes past horizontal.

http://www.flyshack.com/DisplayItem.aspx?ItemID=103111&src=froogle&gclid=CP3-rqfy7LsCFTDhQgodjG0AuA

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Absolutely about about the tip downs… I have a couple of yours and love them as well, especially for warm days in shallower water

But for cold days sitting inside a shack and with fish relating to deeper water (these fish were down 25-30′) I think deadsticking a noodle is going to be my new go-to trick

Will I have been having good luck the same way. By accident of coarse. I am fishing from my snow machine so I am making up a rod holder that I can mount to it.

Now Will, if you were running a Vexilar FLX28 you could set your color pallet to number 2, which eliminates the color green. Green is the weakest signal which is what plankton shows up as. I tried this feature the other night for the first time, it great!

An FLX-28 would have cleared that plankton on low power mode…..
……….but you are right noodles work awesome for dead sticks. I was using my Thorne Bros power noodle to dead stick walleyes last year. Worked awesome.
This weekend my new precision noodle will be getting a workout.

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Now Will, if you were running a Vexilar FLX28 you could set your color pallet to number 2, which eliminates the color green. Green is the weakest signal which is what plankton shows up as. I tried this feature the other night for the first time, it great!

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Ha! I’ve spent 4 solid days experimenting with that FL28 side by side with the MarCum digital units in the last 2 weeks and it pales in comparison to the 6, 7 and 9 for both sensitivity, adjust-ability and target separation. Sorry bud, the 6 color palette on the digital units will do anything the LX28 will ever do and then some.

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An FLX-28 would have cleared that plankton on low power mode…..
……….but you are right noodles work awesome for dead sticks. I was using my Thorne Bros power noodle to dead stick walleyes last year. Worked awesome.
This weekend my new precision noodle will be getting a workout.

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Low power mode is a gimmick. Plain and simple. Vexilar doesn’t allow you to turn your gain down to zero in normal mode so they give you another mode that allows you to do it. All MarCums, even the entry level units like the VX1 Pro, come with a “low power” mode. Its called a gain knob.

They obviously don’t clear out the plankton now do they James?

I fished mine next to an LX7 as well. The Marcums are “jumpy”. I’ve owned 3 of them and all were like this. Oh ya, I burned through 3 trasducers on my Marcum units as well. 2 on my LX5 and one on my LX3. I didn’t come on here to bash Marcums, I was just giving Will a friendly jab.

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They obviously don’t clear out the plankton now do they James?

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Did you fish next to Will in this situation to show that your FL28 could? No, you didn’t. So you’re saying that your FL28 has cleared up some plankton in the water column. Congrats. So can the digital marcums. But unless you were fishing side-by-side with Will you have no idea if your FL28 would have been able to clear it up. So you’re just cluckin’ big chicken.

The post was about rods and new ways to use them.

It didn’t clear some up, it completely eliminated it. Like I said, I was giving Will a friendly jab. No need to come at me all defensive, when I state an honest review of a feature on one of your sponsors competitors products.

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I fished mine next to an LX7 as well. The Marcums are “jumpy”. I’ve owned 3 of them and all were like this. Oh ya, I burned through 3 trasducers on my Marcum units as well. 2 on my LX5 and one on my LX3. I didn’t come on here to bash Marcums, I was just giving Will a friendly jab.

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Forgive me for being more brash than usual. After staring at one for more than a few hours in prep for an upcoming engineering meeting I’m more than familiar with the units capabilities and limitations. I’m not going to bang drums to knock anyone’s product but currently I find myself in the mood to throw a BS flag when and where warranted.

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It didn’t clear some up, it completely eliminated it. Like I said, I was giving Will a friendly jab. No need to come at me all defensive, when I state an honest review of a feature on one of your sponsors competitors products.

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Defensive? Honestly I feel like I’m being offensive. Plankton range in size from 20MM to 2-20 µm in fresh water. Which ones were Will dealing with?

Again, you weren’t there.

No BS about burning through transducers.

Ok……. enough of the friendly Ford vs Chevy debate.

One tip that I have been using for dead sticking with a noodle rod is to set your drag just light enough that when the fish takes it and swims away (assuming it doesn’t just bit & sit) that hot noodle tip bends ever so slightly. Pick the rod up with one hand grab your line (by the reel) and set the hook. The tighten the drag down to where you are comfortable and bring the fish in. Since using this method I can’t remember losing a fish.
Again its good to hear others are using noodles for dead sticks, it just an awesome rod that can be used in so many ways.

Is the QT sensitive enough to deadstick with also?

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No BS about burning through transducers.

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Tri-ducer.

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Is the QT sensitive enough to deadstick with also?

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It is sensitive enough but because it has a faster tip section the fish will feel the resistance of the rod tip sooner than it would if you were fishing the same bait on a noodle rod. Could you use the QT as a dead stick? Yes. Would it make an ideal dead stick rod… not in my opinion. You’ll want a slower action rod for that application.

We all know the tri-beam had issues it’s first year. Vexilar stood behind them, as they should. I had to pay for all my Marcum trasducers. “I’m sorry sir, it’s out of warranty”. I pay for ALL my gear and need a product that’s not going to fail on me.

I don’t see this thread ending well. RIP

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Is the QT sensitive enough to deadstick with also?

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I’m assuming you are talking about the TUCR QT. I feel it could be used as a dead stick as its tip is really soft, but I’ve not used mine as a dead stick yet. I was afraid that the back bone of the QT wouldn’t work as good as a noodle. Out of habit IF I have to dead stick I use a noodle & the us the Precision or QT to work the other line.

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I don’t see this thread ending well. RIP

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Nothing but skinned knees. I’m sure we’ll all come out the other side the way we went in.

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Is the QT sensitive enough to deadstick with also?

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I’m assuming you are talking about the TUCR QT. I feel it could be used as a dead stick as its tip is really soft, but I’ve not used mine as a dead stick yet. I was afraid that the back bone of the QT wouldn’t work as good as a noodle. Out of habit IF I have to dead stick I use a noodle & the us the Precision or QT to work the other line.

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The QT has a very fine tip but in my opinion it transitions very quickly into the backbone… any fish “leaning” on the bait would feel the tip very quickly. If you get to the rod right after the fish takes the bait it would work and likely work well… you’re 100% correct, the QT has a light tip. But with that quick transition into the backbone I’d personally opt for a rod with a slower blank that would slowly load up and give an angler a bit more time to get to the rod after the fish takes the bait.

I’ve not fished a purpose-made “dead stick” for walleye in quite some time and I’ve never tried one made by one of the top custom shops. I’ll be interested to see what they come up with because I really-really don’t like fishing with bobbers to the point that I often opt out of utilizing my second rod in a house that should be put to use simply because I don’t like dealing with the float and the poor hooking percentage that seems to go with fishing them.

Thorne Bros makes the deadstick, which is the only rod I’m aware of that is heavy enough for deadsticking walleyes.

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Ok……. enough of the friendly Ford vs Chevy debate.

One tip that I have been using for dead sticking with a noodle rod is to set your drag just light enough that when the fish takes it and swims away (assuming it doesn’t just bit & sit) that hot noodle tip bends ever so slightly. Pick the rod up with one hand grab your line (by the reel) and set the hook. The tighten the drag down to where you are comfortable and bring the fish in.

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This is the way I typically fish a dead rod in a fish house in the absence of a proper walleye weight dead stick. I’ve used the loose-drag technique described by Egts and it works well. Things can get a little dicey in a hurry if you stick a big fish as it makes getting the drag just right a challenge.

An interesting twist would be to try one of the bait runner spinning reels in this application where the drag was pre-set and all you needed to do was engage the drag lever when it was time to set the hook. All the bait runners I’ve seen are too big for ice fishing but it is a thought, anyway. Maybe once the ice tackle companies have the multipliers figured out they can shift their attention to this type of reel. I’d buy one.

Bait Runner Spinning Reel

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Thorne Bros makes the deadstick, which is the only rod I’m aware of that is heavy enough for deadsticking walleyes.

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TUCR just released their new dead stick rod yesterday. IMHO a noodle is plenty of rod to handle 98% of the walleyes. Mine has landed several ranging from 25-27″. I’m not say a true dead stick rod wouldn’t work better but if you are in a pinch and need to dead stick eyes, a noodle will handle any 15-22″ walleye with ease.