Spring Bobbers ?

[no1son]

During the hard water season the fish are very lethargic due to the cold water. The bite can be very lite on some occasions. The springs do a great job detecting the lite bites and will out perform a float in most cases.
In many cases the bead will not move more than a 1/16 of a inch either up or down. If the lite biters feel any resistance they reject and spit the lure.

Exactly. There are days when you can limit out on just that soft a bite and at times almost as quickly as you can get back down to the fish, plus a bobber no matter how small does not allow one to work one's offering. It just lays there. Sometimes that is good enough but not usually. Bluegills are notorious for the quick spit. Crappies hold a little longer, but also spit, if they feel too much resistance. There have been winters when I could count the total actual strikes for the whole season on the fingers of one hand, and we still iced hundreds of panfish.

[no1son]

You get a musky, a pike, or a decent largemouth on one of those and you will be wishing for more backbone. We get the big eaters joining the panfish party every once in a while. They will take the tiny offerings directly, too.

This rod has a very similar ultraslow, ultrasoft action as the 22" lightest version of the Frabill Panfish Popper which comes with a spring bobber, although that is one of those terrible unadjustable coil spring jobbies. I fished one of those with the spring bobber removed for a couple of seasons and liked the very soft tip on it a whole lot. Then I broke it. The HT 24" Icelander noodle has very nearly that soft of a tip, but it has some backbone behind it farther down the blank. I use a couple of them rebuilt with cork handles and better guides. They work very well. You can also get that soft of a blank from Jann's netcraft and build your own and it will be very close to that soft and that slow, too. They also have everything else you would need including tips with the right size tube, I used single legged fly fishing guides to keep the weight down. That is still too slow for us; so I reenforce the butt with a proper sized piece of broken hollow ultralight out to about the first guide, epoxied in place. My fishing partner held a full sized musky on that for very close to 10 minutes a couple of winters back; so it will take it, when necessary.

I use the soft tipped rods both the purely ice ones and some longer all year around. The summer bite, especially for crappies, can be very nearly as soft around here, a whole lot of times. For tight in jigging the shorter, soft-tipped sticks do very well on open water, too.

Personally I do not like how flexible the corkalon handle is either, but that is just me.

The lakes I normally fish both summer and winter are heavily stocked with muskies and to me they are a plague. But native pike and largemouths show up almost as frequently and walleyes are relatively common around here in crappie fishing, especially late in the day.

[chaunc]

I too enjoy using this rod. Put a reel on it with a good smooth drag and i can handle anything that bites. I've caught walleyes and steelhead as well as bass on mine. No musky or pike landed but have had a few bite offs as once that 3lb line touched their teeth, the fight is over. Probably would happen even with a jason mitchell rod. The HT is inexpensive but a very good ice rod. If i break one, and i have, i just order another. For their price, give them a try. They're a great ice shelter rod.



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HT Enterprises Ice Blue Super Flex Ice Fishing Rod, 18"

Item # 419823
Customer Rating:

4.7
(3 reviews)
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Key Features

• Sensitive spring bobber-like rod tip
  
• One of the most sensitive rods available
  
• Corkalon handle and black rings
  
• E-Z Ice Out steel guides
  
  Right here is the most fun rod I have ever used. No need for a bobber, the tip is very flexibale. If you get a 8" Bluegill on it, you'll think it's a whale...Lots of fun with this one...

I too enjoy using this rod. Put a reel on it with a good smooth drag and i can handle anything that bites. I've caught walleyes and steelhead as well as bass on mine. No musky or pike landed but have had a few bite offs as once that 3lb line touched their teeth, the fight is over. Probably would happen even with a jason mitchell rod. The HT is inexpensive but a very good ice rod. If i break one, and i have, i just order another. For their price, give them a try. They're a great ice shelter rod.

[Bob/MN]

HT Enterprises Ice Blue Super Flex Ice Fishing Rod, 18"

Item # 419823






Key Features

• Sensitive spring bobber-like rod tip
• One of the most sensitive rods available
• Corkalon handle and black rings
• E-Z Ice Out steel guides
  
  Right here is the most fun rod I have ever used. No need for a bobber, the tip is very flexibale. If you get a 8" Bluegill on it, you'll think it's a whale...Lots of fun with this one...

I have not seen this rod so far on the shelves yet.
Is this rod similar to a noodle stick?

[Crappie 1]

Bob, I don't know if you have a Walmart around you. If you do they call these Ice Blue Rods. Blue/Orange tips. They come in several lengths. They are kinda like a Noodle Stick. We used ours this summer at night for Crappie, was sure fun...

[chaunc]

You can also order them online from FishUSA.com - Fishing Tackle at America's Tackle Shop website.
http://www.fishusa.com/HT-Enterprise...ng-Rods_p.html

[no1son]

Around here Fleet Farm carries a big selection of HT ice tackle, including both the Icelander and the Ice Blue Super Flex. The names are labeled on the rod. Make sure you pick out just what you are looking for; HT makes quite a variety of bargain priced tackle, and some of it is pure junk. Fleet Farm here in the Metro (at least two locations) carries a very large selection of ice tackle at least in the beginning of the season.

[CTom]

There are a bunch of very nice, inexpensive noodle type rods out there this year that make springs almost a bother. Yet if you like the springs, a retro fit of a St. Croix panfish similar to the one showing the coil /whisker can be done easily. No1son and I are both familiar with a company that makes high end noodle rods that started at $65.00. Today those rods hold no trump to any of the noodle style rods that many companies make at 1/6th of the price. And you don't have to wait 6 months to get the rod in your hand.

[no1son]

You can also make your own noodle stick in exactly the style you want from the Jann's Netcraft Microlite blanks which work very well for all that they are a bare 3 bucks apiece and come in several lengths. They also have a special very light micro-tubbed tip at 2/64" that works on all of this type of rod, but has a larger loop that doesn't ice up nearly so bad as the real tiny opening ones that the commercial ones tend to have. I have replaced all the tips on all of my various noodle rods with them.

A couple of short evenings is all it takes to build one. A pleasant way to spend some spare time. I built mine on 4 guides on 24" finished length. That produces a very soft noodle rod, but to give it some backbone sheathing the butt out to about the first guide with a tightly fitted section from a broken hollow ultralight epoxied in place turns the trick on that. I used single legged fly guides to cut down on weight with a single legged relatively small spinning guide on the bottom. I like cork but corkalon also works for a handle. I have always gotten good service out of Jann's, too.

I have to say that I got a couple of those expensive rods, but since using them I found I don't need to spend that kind of money or anything close now that I know what kind of performance I want. The expensive models definitely do perform as advertised, make no mistake, but you don't have to shell out that kind of money for that level of performance either. I keep the components for a couple more rods around. Then all I need for replacement is to take the time to assemble them. The biggest part of the time needed is waiting for the epoxy to dry...

There is a certain amount of satisfaction in catching fish on a stick you made yourself, especially if it works like you meant it to in the first place.

[Bob/MN]

X2 - With Bob/ MN on this. Will stick my neck out on this but I would say a spring bobber will in a full winter of ice fishing will out fish all other methods bar none !!!!!!!! Have a great winter season on the ice. STEVE

I have to agree with you 100% and my fishing partner from his experience yesterday would have to agree also. I ended up catching all the fish on our first trip. We both were using the same lure,bait and line. The difference is he was using a noodle stick with a lite tip and I was using a medium action rod with a hybrid .016 spring bobber. He did detect some bites but missed the hook-ups. Needless to say he wants a spring set up on his rod.
I am convinced that there is not a noodle stick around the will detect a lite bite as well as a .010 or .016 SS wire spring bobber.
Now if I am going to do some pounding or spoon fishing then I will use a conventional tip,but when it comes to finesse fishing and a lite bite I will go with the spring every time.