As fisherman do all over the world, we look for the little extra trick to try and get the local species of fish to be more responsive to going after their bait or lure. Changing colors of lure feathers or plastic skirts has been especially successful in offshore fishing in the Keys and places like Hawaii. Green, blue, white, and purple have been especially successful when placed on trolling lure heads in the form of plastic skirts. Large marlin, dorado, and tuna have found these additions very appetizing. Then came along adding dots, lines and faded shadows to the lures trailing skirts, and they too have proven excellent.
After moving down to Florida from New Jersey, I quickly discovered that many fishermen use a Styrofoam float attached to their line to keep their bait suspended at different heights in the water column. This technique was used by freshwater fisherman for many years. In fact, this method has been used by native Alaskans, and native populations all over the U.S. for centuries. After a visit to my local tackle store, I saw that floats were not only available in red and white half color designs on the plastic model floats, but were introduced to the Styrofoam models, as well. But more to my surprise, were the floats in beautiful variations of orange, yellow, chartreuse and red.
The decision as to which color float to select usually became a personal choice. I selected several colors which I thought I could see when floating away from shore or my boat. I placed them in my tackle bag along with a huge assortment of rubber or plastic baits in the form of fish, worms, and several designs I could never recognize. After opening several packs of artificial baits and throwing them back into my bag, I noticed several had their colors run off onto my variety of colored floats. I felt for sure the floats were ruined and left them in my bag never to be used.
On one trip, I cast a good number of the floats into the bushes along the shore and snapped my line trying to retrieve them from the bushes. So as expected, I grabbed an orange float from my bag, which had black color running down the float from one of my plastic baits and decided I would use that float. It reminded me of some decoration I would find in local shops around the Halloween season. To my surprise, I started catching many snook, redfish and sea trout in numbers that I had not seen before when I used the decorated float. As expected, I cast that float into the bushes and managed to lose it. So, into my bag I went and took out a solid orange float. The rate at which I had hook-up began to be noticeably less. I blamed that on a sudden change of tide or the fish moving on. My fishing buddy lost his last float in the bushes, so I gave him one of my dripping blacks on orange floats to use. He said, “don’t you have a clean float I can use?” I asked him to try it and you guessed it…He began catching large numbers of fish more than when he was using the solid color float. I said to him, “I think we have hit on a little modification that the fish in our harbor seem to like.”
On the following day, we went to our favorite tackle shop, and bought a dozen orange and green floats. Some made by the Four Horsemen company and others by the D.O.A. company. These two brands of floats had small stainless rods running through the floats which made them easy to attach to my line, and some had a quarter ounce ball weight in line on that rod to add a little weight to that float.
Later that day we went into my garage, and placed a half dozen floats in a plastic bag with a few of the same bleeding color worms that had created the original random colored float. After 24 hours we returned to see the coloring process had not worked. We then added a process of our own. First, we took a clean orange float and added some random runs of painters’ blue tape to the float. We ran the tape in all different directions with no pattern in mind. Using an old spray can of flat black paint, we sprayed the floats. After about two hours we returned and removed the painters’ tape from the floats. The remarkable designs formed from the paint running along the tape lines, and just in random ways created floats that looked just like the ones we used that had developed designs caused by running color from our rubber or plastic soft baits. The following week we used our newly created “HALLOWEEN” floats and again had nice catches of fish.
Well, we can’t say for sure it was that little random design added to the float that caused the bite, but it was the only thing we changed to our rigging that improved the bite. Many of our floats came back to us with chunks of foam having bitten off the floats. So, I guess the fish did float or were annoyed by this little modification. Have some fun and give it a try. We hope you will get the same results too. We photographed some of our masterpiece floats for you to see just how random this modification was in the final product.
Tight Lines
