Homemade Spring Bobber.

[Cheetah]

Hello everyone. I thought I would share with the forum my new spring bobbers that I made. I used .020" music wire (piano wire), about 6" long each. One was for a broken ice rod that I wanted to keep using, and it worked great on perch this past weekend. The other was a rod I don't use often because the tip is too stiff for my liking, so I took the tip off and extended it out with the spring bobber. Haven't tried using this one yet, but same design basically so it should work.

Lighter wire is probably best for ultralight panfish jigs and such. The .020 with longer wire works for my tackle.

It's not really fancy. Red plastic bead for the tip since I didn't have any glow beads, roughly 6mm size faceted. The eye is simply bent using pliers, round nose ideally. Cut the wire to length. Slide heat shrink over wire before attaching to rod. Glued to the rod with a small hot glue gun for about a 1" length. Probably overkill... Trimmed off excess glue once cooled. Slide heatshrink back over the glue, heat it all up again with a hair dryer so the heat shrink tubing will shrink, some glue may squeeze out. Let it cool. Go fishing.

[lovetoicefish]

Where did you find the "heatshrink"?

[Cheetah]

I had it lying around from past electronics projects. Pretty sure I ordered it from Jameco, they have an online and print catalog. It's fairly common though, I'd expect most hardware stores to have it.

[pureinsanity]

Cool idea!

[Ralph Wiggum]

Where did you find the "heatshrink"?

Electrical department of any hardware store, Fleet Farm, etc.