Thanks guys.

mahtofire14 wrote:

Look pretty good to me.

Thanks. I’m looking for one to take to the State Fair along with a couple others that already have a place. I have more blanks ordered so I have plenty to practice with.

These will fish just fine and catch fish, they’re just not right in my mind to show at the fair.

How many have noticed that in the last few years a guy cannot buy a quality spinning rod without having to suffer those dinky, crap, concept guides? I cast a lot of slip floats and the string knots just don’t like those dainty little guides. Whoever came up with that idea should get a lobotomy.

On my two St. Croix panfish specials and the new Scheels rod I have pulled the concepts off and put #6 high frames in their place so casting isn’t impaired by the tiny guide holes. The high frames pretty much match the first three or maybe four guides that come on rods today.

On casting rods they don’t seem to cause any issues since the line is basically running down the pipe and off the tip, but put anything on the line that will get reeled up past the first few guides, like a stop knot, and misery isn’t far behind.

robby wrote:

Are you vertically jigging these baits? I have vertically jigged Rattl Traps for a long time with good results on multiple species.

Pretty much, yes. Clam Frost braid at 4lb test/diameter. We’ll drift them thru a school too, just drop down to the marks, maybe a bit higher up, and let the boat drift over the fish. Not much jigging action imparted. Short 6″ lift and drop on a tight line, rest for 20 seconds or so, repeat.

I just started fishing this Scheels branded rod this spring and really like it. Its carrying a 1000 Sahara on it. Well balanced, long casting with 4lb Trilene XL.

http://www.scheels.com/p/42300001313/?queryID=75d480ba0b3361163a3698e6eae098ca

The rod you want to look at is at the bottom of the menu stack.

LabDaddy1 wrote:

God those are awesome, as usual. Next batch a school of bluegills? Or have you already done them? Don’t remember.

LabDaddy1, here are a couple sunfish I did. There’s a lot of detail to go on a small bait but they aren’t too bad and yes they catch fish nicely.

Attachments:

1. 

   449356327_2122918808083568_3034131946487562827_n.jpg
   

The Crocus started popping today, too.

Attachments:

1. 

   487794535_2350266132015500_6917253699753313043_n.jpg
   

Riverrat wrote:

I’ve been thinking of them all day and this post isn’t helping.

Dinner is only a short wait now, right? lol

I could easily put this one hard bait/color in my box and not use any anything else and simply smoke suspended crappies.

Attachments:

1. 

   488642323_2349881985387248_4323419972919434351_n.jpg
   

Menards north in Rochester had a big box of them a couple days ago, but no idea what the price was.

glenn57 wrote:

LabDaddy……Jimmy doesnt know what a sunfish is!

Actually glenn, one warm day last fall a friend and I were jigging this same bait but in a different color pattern over a real deep pocket of water in the backwaters thinking the fish we were seeing suspended down about ten feet were crappies. They turned out to be sunfish in the 8″-10″ range and we must have caught fifty or more. We had a field day. Every one went back as we had some dandy crappies in the cooler already and really didn’t want more fish to clean. So, I do know what a sunfish is. lol

Dan wrote:

So seeing the location/business behind this auction…is Universal RV/Marine in Rochester closing?

Who knows. Who cares? For as long as that company sold boats in town here, I never set foot in there. Bayliner dealer.

I listen to a local station while in the shop working but when I get tired of all the yacking between songs I go to my pile of Irish Pub CDs and toss a couple in the trays and then really enjoy the music.

WOW. There’s a ton of stuff here. I just spent 5 minutes scrolling thru the front end of this and the progress bar on the right side of the screen was down about 1/8″.

In Duluth the wind is howling and some snow with it. Theyt’ve upped the wave predictions from 9 feet to 11 by mid-afternoon now and there are rip current warnings for the surfers. I didn’t see any of them out there today, yet, but the day is young.

In Two Harbors the waves are rolling over the breakwater.

I’m just fine seeing this drizzle.

I just expanded our local weather radar, and by the looks of what’s yet to come up there I’d be ok with just staying indoors today. 9:45-10:00 this morning looks like about when the onset of ugly might start up.

We have drizzle here and warming temps thru the day so whatever little bit of white slop that we got yesterday will go quickly today. Our streets and sidewalks were mostly just wet last night, but there was a little snow on grassy areas.

bigcrappie wrote:

Alright Jimmy I will take 2

Check your pms.

These that I make are the only ones I put on a line. When they were commercially made as the mini-stealth the #2 worked for the 1/32-1/64th stuff and the #3 picked up the 1/24 and 1/16.

With a 1/16 head and a 2″ plastic this morning I was casting to bridge pilings 60 feet away using these small floats. The crappies I caught were all upward hits and as described, the float laid right over the instant the weight was taken from the float. No better indicator of an upward hit than that.

Thill makes some really sensitive floats when rigged properly but no stick float or weighted float will react as fast as these do. Thill never should have halted making these guys.

They’re probably real fresh eggs. The wife buys eggs for her deviled eggs about a month before she’s going to do them, say for Easter. She bought those eggs two weeks ago. She says the membranes in the eggs that are fresh won’t let go of the shell or the cooked egg. Swears that eggs at least a month old won’t have that membrane.

She starts with ice cold water with the eggs in it and brings the water to a light boil for four minutes or so, then dunks them immediately in ice water.

Congrats Brian! 40 years at one business is a looooong time. Enjoy YOUR time now.

Here’s just one box of floats that I’ve tried and they failed the test. I have four more boxes like this stowed away.

Attachments:

1. 

   487960939_2346960805679366_2191466703291155662_n.jpg
   

Snake ii’s wrote:

What?!?!?!?!?!?!?
My keyboard has no facies or emoties. Are they hidden?

look at the “reply to help below the last post. Then check the menu at the top, far right.

This picture should self explain how the float is rigged to be fixed.

Attachments:

1. 

   IMG_0516-scaled.jpg
   

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Jimmy Jones wrote:</div>
Public land or private property there’s always going to be that certain segment of our society that thinks laws do not pertain to them.

in the superior national forest, 9 times out of 10 the rouge ATV trails will lead to a pile of empty beer cans and/or a pile of trash and burn pit

We see that around county quarries near our land all the time. Its amazing how much crap we see.

I had .57″ at 7 this morning. Just a light but steady drizzle out there right now. Snow is forecast, but not much.

I really haven’t followed looper fishing much since they stopped stocking them. I fished the equipment I had until they stopped showing up on the shore. Looper anything is sort of a misnomer anymore since they went away.

A friend in Two Harbors swears he caught one a couple years ago but I think it was a steelhead. Who knows.

If we have cohos around the breakwater I’ll fish a looper bug and a couple waxies or a hook and minnow, but other than that I have no idea what looper stuff is around anymnore.

The looper floats are great for fishing larger fish but if he’s after pannies or crappies they’d be way to large of a float.

When Minnesota had a decent looper fishery those floats were the best. I still have a few in a tackle satchel that I carried just for looper fishing. Man I miss not having that and those fish around anymore.

Public land or private property there’s always going to be that certain segment of our society that thinks laws do not pertain to them.

Mr. Fins must have been out late last night…. he hasn’t been here offering any opinions today, yet.

mahtofire14 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Bearcat89 wrote:</div>
Whats your go to early cold water <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>bass tactics ?

Self admittedly, I suck early spring. We’ve never been able to fish it until WI went to C and R before the season opened. I struggle when fish aren’t on shallow cover or there aren’t weed beds/weedlines to fish. So early spring is tough for me. However I’ve been doing a lot of reading and watching for early coldwater spring bass, and Ive found the common areas of focus are main lake points and covering water. Once you find them they are usually schooled up until they start moving up shallower. But basically the consensus was they stay deeper near points that are close to spawning grounds, then move to secondary points shallower, then the spawning grounds.

So that will be my focus, using chatterbaits, lipless cranks, blade baits, and paddletails and underspins to cover water, until they start moving up. We’ll see if it works.

I know on a local lake that both smallies and largemouths hang right at the first break in shoreline water and absolutely murder my crappies baits. The crappies like to hang at that break too along with pike and catfish so I can be a crap shoot what’s going to hit, but I can say crappie, smallie, lm, cat then pike in that order. And that break is from three to about 5 1/2 feet, but its an abrupt, sharp drop.

I make these floats. The balsa itself 1-1/4″ high and for the most part 5/8″ at the widest and are used with 1/16-ounce jigs and plastics to 2-1/2″. Some are a bit smaller for use when fishing lighter jigs and smaller plastics. They are about the best float I have ever used.

The secret behind these floats is the instability of the float itself. They lay flat on the water when there’s no weight on them. They can be rigged as static floats or as slips. With the hole in the bottom of the stem and the float top- heavy, any lift or touch on the jig will cause these guys to simply flop over on their sides, which is super for detecting upward hits, much like a spring bobber allows one to see the lift.

They’re compact and when rigged as a slip they set right down on the jig or hook allowing for very decent distance casting. Rigged as a fixed float they cast quite well up to about a 4-foot depth. Bite reaction is the same regardless.

I made these yesterday and did photos of the different steps. We’ll see if I can get them pics to load.

In the picture stack, these floats start out as laminated balsa in the bottom left photo. Using 4 foot lengths of each size to make a 5/8 square stock with a 1/8″ core. The stock is cut to 1-1/2″ lengths as seen in the picture. On one end a 1/8″ square balsa piece, 1/2″ long, is slipped into the core.

Left center, the picture shows the blanks with arbors inserted into the open end and ready to go into the Dremel for sanding to shape. The first sanding is done with sheetrock sanding sheets and takes maybe a minute to get to the rough dimensions I want, then fine sandpaper is used to do the final shaping. When I switch to the sandpaper, I also use a hacksaw blade to trim the top 1/4 ” off the float body with the Dremel running, then continue with the sandpaper for the final shaping.

Right center ids the mess of them ready to have the arbors removed. Using more of the 1/8″ square balsa stock cut into 5″ sticks, I insert a stick in each body and each body gets dunked in a bath of very thin dipping lacquer, allowed to drip a few seconds then the stick get stood up in a jar of vermiculite to dry. Each body will get three dips in this lacquer. Since its about a thin as urine on a plate the lacquer dries very quickly, maybe five minutes between dips.

Top right shows the floats after the lacquer bath and with the polystyrene stems glued in place using a lightweight epoxy and ready for the color lacquer dips. I use bent paper clips through the line hole in the stems to hang the dipped floats on a drying rack. The white goes on first, two coats. Then the chartreuse and finally the fluorescent orange. When These coats have dried the floats get 2 coats of a water-born one part epoxy.

The top left shows the floats as they hang to dry hard and the bottom right picture, of course, shows them ready to fish with the silicone line stays slipped up on the lower stems. Rigging is simple. For a static, or fixed, float, remove the silicone sleeves, slide the line thru the eye in the stem, then slide the silicone sleeves back on the line and over the stem as the look in the picture. The top sleeve goes clear to the float body, the second just above the line eye. Rigged as such the float can be adjusted for depth simply by sliding it while holding the line above or below the float with the other hand depending on if you want to raise or lower the float. Just leave the silicone bands in place to run as a slip float. Leaving the bands on the stem does nothing to affect the float or its ability to show up-ward hits and by leaving them there they’ll always be hand if one wants to change from a slip to fixed.

That’s it. The handiest float ever devised and the company that used to make them really messed up by discontinuing them. There are several differences between the old factory-made floats and these, one big difference is the use of the polystyrene stem in these which has a reasonable amount of “give” if they get bounced off of rocks or a dock or hard tree limb. The factory stem was hard plastic and would snap off if it hit something real hard. These floats simply rebound. Als, the line eyes have been chamfered at the top and bottom so that rigged slip the line flows thru the holes without having to run over a sharp edge. The hole in the stem is large enough that line flow is unreal, yet small enough that one can simply leave the thread tags a bit long when trimming a stop and the stop will not go thru the hole.

There are a million variations of floats on the market. Some are gimmick, but for the most part they all work…. just some better than others. I’ve been fishing this particular float for over 30 years and when I couldn’t buy them any longer, I started making my own. The weighted Thills mentioned earlier are great floats for getting distance but then the weight becomes a factor in upward hits. These compact, little floats are sensitive as all get out, and when rigged as a slip they cast easily about 50 feet, maybe longer, on a thin 4 pound line with a 1/16 head and plastic.

Attachments:

1. 

   486696286_2344490029259777_6169324264042978282_n.jpg
   

2. 

   486649657_2344490002593113_8969188966430259024_n.jpg
   

3. 

   486610497_2344489969259783_5339035695707191628_n-1.jpg
   

4. 

   486186914_2344489942593119_3288533559942447539_n.jpg
   

5. 

   487014778_2344489899259790_745396796110705594_n-1.jpg
   

6. 

   487418437_2344490075926439_8728006746154127469_n.jpg