Stan Fagerstrom
05-31-2005, 07:58 AM
“You Can Find ‘Em With A Float”
By Stan Fagerstrom
The world’s best known hook maker has just done one heck of a favor for the tens of thousands of anglers who do most of their fishing with a float.
If you’ve been around fishing long enough to know a bobber from your bellybutton, you know about Gamakatsu Hooks. They’re the sharpest you can get. But now the Gamakatsu folks have done something else. As I’ve already indicated, it deals with floats and it’s pretty darn “sharp,” too!
These Gamakatsu floats are brand new and they might not yet be in your favorite sporting goods store. If you use floats in your own piscatorial pursuits, you’re probably going to want the store to order a couple for you if they don’t already have them in stock.
http://www.ifish.net/sfgamfloat.jpg
Here's a close up of Gamakatsu's new Firetip Float. This float has several new features designed to make it a favorite among the nation's fishermen.
The new style bobber Gamakatsu is now marketing is called a Firetip Float. You need to eyeball one of these new floats up close and careful to fully appreciate its unusual qualities.
For starters, the Firetip Float has a hollow soft rubber top that holds a teensy lithium battery. That long lasting little battery provides enough light for the user to see it away over yonder. You can use it while the sun is shining or after it’s long gone. The Firetip will alert you if a fish is messing around with your bait or lure regardless of light conditions.
You may have used lighted floats of one kind or another in the past. Take my word for it, you’ve not used one like the new Gamakatsu Firetip. For one thing, you’re not going to have to screw around with light bulbs that break when you bounce the float off a rock or that burns out just when they start biting.
I say you won’t because the Firetip is made from high impact plastic. It’s a tough little bugger that will stand up to some pretty rough handling.
A friend snorted when I started telling him about these new floats. “Floats?” he grunted, “I haven’t used those things since I was a kid.”
I don’t use floats a bunch, either. But don’t kid yourself, they can be tremendous fishing tools for a variety of fishing tasks. That fact was brought home to me big time when I was still young and figured I had a whole lot more answers than I do now.
Among other things, I was convinced I was a pretty darn good crappie fisherman. Then I ran into an older Guy named Tom. While I was running around from one spot to another on the lake we both often fished, I noticed that Tom just anchored his boat over a sunken rock pile and stayed put.
It’s easy to recall the first time I ran my boat over to see how Tom was doing. I noticed he was using a float. “You fishin’ with worms?” I asked.
“No,” he replied, “I’m using a little fly I tie myself. As you can see, I’m using it with a float. It works pretty good.”
“Got any fish to prove it?”
The experience I’m telling about took place more than 50 years ago. We didn’t have live wells in our boats back then. Tom motioned for me to come closer. I rowed over as he pulled up a burlap bag he had tied to one side of his boat. The bag was half full of crappie.
“These are just average size,” he said as he picked a couple of the silvery-sided panfish out of the bag. I keep my big ones in this bag over here.”
Tom reached for a second burlap bag hanging in the water on the other side of his boat. I realized I didn’t know quite as much as I thought I did about crappie catching when he displayed a few of those fish for me. He had a couple dozen beauties. Every dang one of them was bigger than anything I’d ever caught from the lake we were fishing.
http://www.ifish.net/sfanitacr.jpg
Crappie fishing is just one of many kinds of fishing where floats can be used to great advantage. The lady pictured here used a float to catch the dandy crappie she's holding.
Tom told me that one of the primary keys to his crappie fishing success was his float. I’d already learned that you had to fish your lures really slow to catch crappies consistently. It hadn’t occurred to me that a float might make it easier to do that.
Tom told me the first thing he did was to determine the depth at which the crappies were holding. Once he’d done that, he positioned his float, then cast his float and fly 30 or 40-feet from the boat. He was in no hurry to bring the float and fly back. He’d inch it along a foot or so, then just leave it dead in the water.
He told me he got about as many hits when he wasn’t moving the float at all. The slightest riffle on the surface evidently gave the little fly enough movement to get the crappies to grab it.
This experience was just one instance where I’ve seen floats used to good advantage over the past half century of fishing and writing about it. I’ve since watched them used for everything from nighttime catfish to salmon and steelhead fishing.
Again, if you’re one of the many who uses floats, you’re going to want to take a look at the Gamakatsu Firetip. They come in two sizes and are equipped with a swivel and a clip so they can be rigged in a fixed position or used as a slip float. If you have Internet access, you’ll find diagrams and rigging tips at www.gamakatsu.com (http://www.gamakatsu.com), the Gamakatsu website.
The Gamakatsu folks really started something when they introduced the world’s sharpest hooks. Now they’ve done the same thing in the field of floats.
By Stan Fagerstrom
The world’s best known hook maker has just done one heck of a favor for the tens of thousands of anglers who do most of their fishing with a float.
If you’ve been around fishing long enough to know a bobber from your bellybutton, you know about Gamakatsu Hooks. They’re the sharpest you can get. But now the Gamakatsu folks have done something else. As I’ve already indicated, it deals with floats and it’s pretty darn “sharp,” too!
These Gamakatsu floats are brand new and they might not yet be in your favorite sporting goods store. If you use floats in your own piscatorial pursuits, you’re probably going to want the store to order a couple for you if they don’t already have them in stock.
http://www.ifish.net/sfgamfloat.jpg
Here's a close up of Gamakatsu's new Firetip Float. This float has several new features designed to make it a favorite among the nation's fishermen.
The new style bobber Gamakatsu is now marketing is called a Firetip Float. You need to eyeball one of these new floats up close and careful to fully appreciate its unusual qualities.
For starters, the Firetip Float has a hollow soft rubber top that holds a teensy lithium battery. That long lasting little battery provides enough light for the user to see it away over yonder. You can use it while the sun is shining or after it’s long gone. The Firetip will alert you if a fish is messing around with your bait or lure regardless of light conditions.
You may have used lighted floats of one kind or another in the past. Take my word for it, you’ve not used one like the new Gamakatsu Firetip. For one thing, you’re not going to have to screw around with light bulbs that break when you bounce the float off a rock or that burns out just when they start biting.
I say you won’t because the Firetip is made from high impact plastic. It’s a tough little bugger that will stand up to some pretty rough handling.
A friend snorted when I started telling him about these new floats. “Floats?” he grunted, “I haven’t used those things since I was a kid.”
I don’t use floats a bunch, either. But don’t kid yourself, they can be tremendous fishing tools for a variety of fishing tasks. That fact was brought home to me big time when I was still young and figured I had a whole lot more answers than I do now.
Among other things, I was convinced I was a pretty darn good crappie fisherman. Then I ran into an older Guy named Tom. While I was running around from one spot to another on the lake we both often fished, I noticed that Tom just anchored his boat over a sunken rock pile and stayed put.
It’s easy to recall the first time I ran my boat over to see how Tom was doing. I noticed he was using a float. “You fishin’ with worms?” I asked.
“No,” he replied, “I’m using a little fly I tie myself. As you can see, I’m using it with a float. It works pretty good.”
“Got any fish to prove it?”
The experience I’m telling about took place more than 50 years ago. We didn’t have live wells in our boats back then. Tom motioned for me to come closer. I rowed over as he pulled up a burlap bag he had tied to one side of his boat. The bag was half full of crappie.
“These are just average size,” he said as he picked a couple of the silvery-sided panfish out of the bag. I keep my big ones in this bag over here.”
Tom reached for a second burlap bag hanging in the water on the other side of his boat. I realized I didn’t know quite as much as I thought I did about crappie catching when he displayed a few of those fish for me. He had a couple dozen beauties. Every dang one of them was bigger than anything I’d ever caught from the lake we were fishing.
http://www.ifish.net/sfanitacr.jpg
Crappie fishing is just one of many kinds of fishing where floats can be used to great advantage. The lady pictured here used a float to catch the dandy crappie she's holding.
Tom told me that one of the primary keys to his crappie fishing success was his float. I’d already learned that you had to fish your lures really slow to catch crappies consistently. It hadn’t occurred to me that a float might make it easier to do that.
Tom told me the first thing he did was to determine the depth at which the crappies were holding. Once he’d done that, he positioned his float, then cast his float and fly 30 or 40-feet from the boat. He was in no hurry to bring the float and fly back. He’d inch it along a foot or so, then just leave it dead in the water.
He told me he got about as many hits when he wasn’t moving the float at all. The slightest riffle on the surface evidently gave the little fly enough movement to get the crappies to grab it.
This experience was just one instance where I’ve seen floats used to good advantage over the past half century of fishing and writing about it. I’ve since watched them used for everything from nighttime catfish to salmon and steelhead fishing.
Again, if you’re one of the many who uses floats, you’re going to want to take a look at the Gamakatsu Firetip. They come in two sizes and are equipped with a swivel and a clip so they can be rigged in a fixed position or used as a slip float. If you have Internet access, you’ll find diagrams and rigging tips at www.gamakatsu.com (http://www.gamakatsu.com), the Gamakatsu website.
The Gamakatsu folks really started something when they introduced the world’s sharpest hooks. Now they’ve done the same thing in the field of floats.