Detecting light bites

[Got_Ice]

Today we ran into some perch that were pretty much just sucking the jig in and you couldn't even feel the hit. I had a spring bobber but still could hardly detect the suck in of the jig. Any tips when this happens? Has anyone used a slip bobber with any effectiveness? I thought this way if they sucked the jig in it would take the weight off and maybe I would see the bobber rise just slightly. We are using really light jigs so I'm not sure if it would pull the bobber down enough. I marked lots of fish coming up to the jig but only caught 2. If I had a way to detect the jig getting sucked in that was better I would have had more success. Any help would be great. Thanks, Jeff

[Trouthunter]

power noodle

[Bob Horn]

I think a spring bobber is going to be the most senitive think you can have to detect bites. It has to be a quality spring like St. Croix`s. The power noodle is a good rod also. But if that don`t cut it for you then it`s time for the underwater camera and watch the bite.

[markkstanley]

Might try Mini Stealth slip bobbers the smallest sized. Mine will lay flat when pressure is off or fish are hitting up.

[Random guy]

I use a trick like Mark. Tall slim bobbers that I will adjust and mess with so the bobber floats at a 45 degree angle. Hard for those little fellas to touch the bait without moving the bobber.

[Bruce Mosher]

Try out my 3" Ice Buster Bobbers. Nothing will work with as many features as these. IF you trim it all the way down to the water line it is extrememly sensitive. You can also see your bobber lift upward and lay on it's side if you get a light bite riser or it will slowly sink if they take it down. One thing different with these compared to a spring bobber is that in a particular situation if the spring bobber detects a bite and you miss it an Ice Buster Bobber will gradually go down a hole and you can give the fish more time (than a spring bobber)before you set the hook. The Ice Busters will never freeze to the line, they snap on and off the line, you can trim them down to perfectly match any size jig (for sensitivity), they don't break if you step on them and you can also use a light stick inserted into the top for night fishing. It's also hard to use a spring bobber in the wind. I guess everything has it's place. Good luck, Bruce Mosher

[Deitz Dittrich]

I have said this before, so if its a repeat for you i'm sorry. I was one of the last to jump on the Ice Buster band wagon. I thought they may have been a passing fad. How wrong I was, I now have quite a few of them, just a Bruce mentioned. I have plenty cut down to the length of my favorite jigs. No need for a bead, just a bobber stop. With light biting fish you can see the bobber come up. I hvae at times even used a spring bobber and an ice buster bobber. This for when I wanted to tempt the fish up.

Other than that I like to rest the line on my finger like someone would when they were lindy rigging. I feel a bite through the line, more than I can see it with my rod tip.

[Big D 1]

Quality Spring bobbers, or I have two good ultralight rods I built that i like even better...nothing more accurate than feeling the bite

D

[harvey lee]

Spring bobbers are great,but ther are days when you cannot detect any bite.I will at times make sure there is no weight on my line other than the jig,trim a ice buster bobber so it is almost ready to sink.If the fish lightly tap it the bobber will go down and if they lift it up the bobber will come up and lay at a angle if they lift far enough.Between a spring bobber and a ice buster you can catch almost every fish.The other option is to drop your camera if you have one and watch when they take the bait and set the hook.Between the three you should get the light biter.Works for me.

[Bruce Mosher]

Another trick I do for light biters is to trim an Ice Buster Bobber (3" size) down so far as to make it SLOWLY sink your jig into the strike zone. You can watch your bobber go down the hole ever so slowly and all of a sudden it STOPS. Which means set the hook, a Crappie or Bluegill just bit the bait! And the best part is that if you don't want the Bobber on your line just snap it off and you don't have a rotten plastic bead sneaking all the way down to your hook or getting caught up in your rod tips. Good luck, Bruce Mosher

[FreeFlySpy]

I had the same problem this weekend but downsized to #14 jig and spikes...and of course 2 lbs vanish.

[woodyjdh]

Hey Bruce, I just wanted to thank you for coming out with the ice buster bobber! I was very reluctant to try them, as I was taught to use Thill type bobbers. But after trying one out, I am sold and then some on ICE BUSTER! And you are right about trimming them down, I have mine set just so the top breaks the surface of the water. As far as cutting it so it sets just below the surface-so it is submerged about an inch, just ran into that situation this weekend, and was pleasantly surprised! Now if we could get together sometime, I have some thoughts to pass along.

[Got_Ice]

Thanks for the tips. I tried the spring bobber but still didn't see enough, the camera won't work because the water is just to staind. I'll have to try the Ice Buster bobbers. I always thought they were a gimmick but I'll have to look into them. I'm guessing it's not tough to trim these up? Any other tips are welcomed. Thanks again.

[SomethingFishy*]

I use the Ice Buster bobbers and they are great, I cut mine down to about 1 inch. Very easy for the fish to pull down. Easy to trim, easy to take off.

[Captain B.R.K]

I think the ice buster bobber is a good option, but I was going to put a plug in for the spring bobber. I was a doubter as well for many years about the spring bobber, but I'm glad I listened to Matt Johnson that time in Thorne Bros. and since then I've been panfishing fishing with a spring bobber!

I think you should give the spring bobber a 2nd chance before you give up on it so soon.

A few things I would take a look at is the rod/spring bobber set up right so that you can feel those subtle bites. How about the lighting in your shack? If you can't see the spring bobber well, you will not be able to detect those bites. The spring bobbers purpose is for detecting those light biters so if you are expecting to feel something through the rod, you will be missing a lot of bites.

The small things go a long ways. I would definately give the spring bobber a 2nd shot and I bet you'll get some better results.

[woodyjdh]

Captain B.R.K. funny you should mention spring bobbers. I picked up a pack of Panfish poppers (frabil). I haven't had the opportunity to try them out yet, but hope to soon. I've never used them before, so it should be interesting to say the least. This past weekend my son and I lost 3 due to light bites, thinking it's time to try them out!

[basssmasher*]

i'm gonna put a plug in for both..i love the springbobbers and the ice busters are great for crappies so i use both of them..i will never fush pannies w/out a springbobber again though!!!

[Genofish]

I would second the spring bobber. I have both of my crappie rods setup with spring bobbers. There are times i go to jig and there is a fish on but i never saw the spring bobber move. Maybe i was looking at the vex. It helps to keep the line slack free and i bend the spring bobber up a little bit.

[Genofish]

I would second the spring bobber. I have both of my crappie rods setup with spring bobbers. There are times i go to jig and there is a fish on but i never saw the spring bobber move. Maybe i was looking at the vex. It helps to keep the line slack free and i bend the spring bobber up a little bit.

[Captain B.R.K]

You'll find success in a spring bobber, you just have to have a little confidence in them thats all.

When I'm jigging with a spring bobber, I typically have the line tight and watch any subtle movements on the bobber. Of course I'm also looking at my flasher too and when I see any movement and there is a bar by my lure...I'll set the hook. More times than not, I'll be reeling up a fish

[missedoneagain]

When I run into this type of light bite, I will actually remove my ice buster and use the knot as a bobber. I prop my pole up so it is sitting 6 inches or so off the ice and have the knot almost touching the water. If I see it touch the water I have a bite. By leaving the tip above the water, I can verify the bite by lowering the tip. If the line stays, there is a fish on.

[CrappieJohn]

When I fish thru a hole, I seldom use anything but a spring bobber, but there is one exception.

First, lets clear the air on cost of tackle here. A person does not need to spend 50+ bucks on a rod to acieve spring bobber sensitivity. The Frabil panfish poppers are an easy, inexpensive solution to getting yourself on the ice with a spring float....3/under $10. The St.Croix replacement springs are uner eight bucks a pop and it takes little to make on of those work too without the fancy schmancy tip top found on the factory rods.

If you decide to use the Frabil or Ht tubular springs, take time at home to make a wire threader and be sure to carry it with your tackle. Simply fold in half a thin copper wire and tape the loose ends together with electricians tape. When needed, slide the folded end into and thru the wire from the very end of the spring, slip the tag end of the line thru the wire loop and pull the wire back out. This will save a lot of time fiddling around with cold fingers and dark confines.

The only other issues concerning the spring bobber directly are too heavy of line, line with too much memory and using these outside of a house in very cold temps. These are, however, great spring bobbers and can affordably help you catch a ton more fish.

With todays super soft lines and rods( many of these are very inexpensive )with tips almost as thin as the line itself, fishing by watching the rod tip is almost as effective.

But still, there is the one senario where the ice busters will reign supreme and it has been described here. When the fish are hitting so soft that even a spring bobber will not register a hit and a regular float will not even tip or settle slightly to show the bite, the ice buster that is veryyyyyyy slowly settling down in the water column will show the hits as a STOP. The ice buster that is trimmed to be just past neutrally bouyant simply doesn't sink any further at the hit. This is the only practical way to find these hits. The only time this case might not hold up is if you are set up within inches of the bottom and the fish are feeding on a horizontal plane: if you are catching 12 inch crappies or ten inch gills, these fish have two inches or more of body below the lips and they fish are doing nothing more than sliding straight up to the bait at a mere crawl. If the bobber is set to settle to the bottom and has past the lips of the fish, they are NOT going to tip downward to hit....they are absolute in the negative mood.

Springs and ice busters are today's conventional tackle. Gone are the hard clip-on round bobbers of the past along with those tall stick floats. The ice buster bobber achieves another standard of bouyancy, one which has gone unaddressed in years past, that being a float which can be adjusted to maintain a consistent fall rate just under the nuetrally bouyant point. There is a whole other school of spring bobbers on the market today that makes panfishing not only hyper sensitive, but inexpensive. And to a lesser degree, tackle makers today make rods with materials tougher than tough with ultra-fine tips capable of detecting most hits without having to take out a loan.

For someone who has not fished thru the ice enough to warrant owning any takle and then gets invited out for a weekend of pannie fishing, it is very concieable for that person to purchase two rod/reel set-up, put line on them, get a package of the springs and a package of the ice busters.....quite realistically be ready to fish....and have to spend MORE money on the jigs just to have a decent assortment.

I have rods without any springs or floats that I jig spoons with. If the fish are hitting jiggin spoons you quite frankly don't need either of these bobber types to catch them. I almost always start with these.

Then I have spring bobber equipped rods...several of them. These have the inexpensive spring I just alluded to and I can adjust the spring to achieve any desired action that the more expensive rods say they can do. I use these rods perhaps the most.

Then there is a rod,or maybe two, with no float at all but very lexible at the tip. If the fishing gets so tough that I have to do the ice buster in a neutral mode, the floats go on this/these rod(s). It pays to have two set aside for this purpose.

The cost to a person to get armed with both of these float types is less than 12 bucks. The cost is more than off-set by the number of fish one will catch....ones that would have gotten by undetected otherwise. To not have one's self covered in this aspect is like trying to fish with a tree limb and some twine. You might actually catch fish this way, but you'll certainly catch more if you are properly prepared.

[jdubbs31]

Does Gander sell glo-stick inserts for ice bobbers?

[Tripleplay]

One fix I saw last year to an Ice Buster was by a fellow FM poster. He actually took round toothpicks and dipped one end in fluorescent paint. Then he would insert the toothpick in the top of the ice buster to drive everything but the tip of the toothpick underwater.

He swore by the sensitivity and my son jumped in one day and used them with him to great success. Just a little further refinement on the trimming to water level concept!

I can't speak for Gander glo-sticks but doesn't Northland have glow sticks for sale in small packages that you could push down into the top of an Ice Buster as well.

[Bruce Mosher]

Tese are some Great posts! Everyone is getting more advanced these days. Have fun, Bruce Mosher