When ice fishing with ultralight tackle, it can be very easy to miss a subtle bite and hook-set. A spring bobber can be a huge help in improving your hook-sets and landing more bites on the ice. The spring bobber's purpose is to add sensitivity to your rod so that even when you can't feel a bite, you can see it. With a foam insert, you can easily attach it to to top of your rod, effectively adding a new top, extremely sensitive eyelet. 

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Video transcript:

Josh:
All right, guys. Welcome back to the Monsterbass channel. I'm Josh from Bennett Fishing. Today we're going to be talking about something that I first started using when I first started ice fishing that I haven't used it in a while, but Monsterbass just sent me one from Sitka and it's actually what's called a spring bobber. I'm going to show you guys how to use it, when to use it, why we should be using it, especially for new ice fisherman that are just getting into the sport. It's a really great tool for people that don't have that feel for a little tiny perch bite or a blue gill bite, or they wear monster gloves like I do and have cheap rods and you can't feel the bite.

Josh:
Let's show you guys how to set one up. Let's try to get some fish on the ice. Let's show you guys this Sitka spring bobber, show you guys how to use it real quick. That's my pup Copper in the background. He's wandering around. If you see him wandering too far, just let me know.

Josh:
I'll show you my rod set up. This is the Shakespeare wild series. This is a medium heavy rod. This is basically my lake trout rod. It is way too heavy for a panfish, way too heavy to feel panfish bite, so any perch, some bass will hit hard enough, not always. They're pretty lethargic during the wintertime.

Josh:
What we want to do is we want to cut our jig off, whatever we're using at the time and pull our line back at least one eyelet. Then we're going to open up our spring bobber, which I've opened because I used one yesterday. They basically last forever unless you lose them down down the ice, which I've done before by accident.

Josh:
How these work is they have a piece of foam on the back and basically you got another eyelet on the end there. Hopefully you focus on that. What we're going to do is we're going to squeeze that foam and we're going to stick it into the end of the rod here, just the eyelet. Basically like a ear plug kind of style foam. Squeeze that in there as much as we can so it's nice and tight. I like to stick it in as far as, probably halfway, get it in there nice and good basically.

Josh:
What we're going to do is we're going to restring the rod so open up your bale or click your reel open in my case. We're going to thread that line back through that little spring bobber, just like that.

Josh:
What this spring barber is going to do is it allow you to detect even just the slightest, slightest little bite. That's great for either new fishermen or really finicky fish, like crappy can be really finicky, blue gill can be really finicky. They can suck that jig in and spit right back out before you even notice. This is turned a $30 lake trout rod basically into something that's more like a tickle stick that has a very sensitive step. I think a tickle stick's like 60 or 70 bucks. This has basically a built in spring bobber right on the end of it. It's super sensitive all by itself. But it does have some backbone. I have caught lakers on it. It's just not the best. We're really setting a hook on like a bigger jig.

Josh:
We don't use the tickle stick for that. This spring bobber's a really good tool for those stiffer, shorter ice fishing rods, usually the cheaper ones like I like to buy, because I'm roughing on my equipment and I break stuff. We're going to basically try to jig with a plastic and a little tiny jig. We're going to start with that Scandia glow jig. We're going to tip it with a worm or we're going to tip it with a plastic. We'll see the fish are thinking today. Tie it on however you feel like the best knot is. I like the polymer knot if you can get it through the eyelet. If not, just a normal fisherman's knot or a clench knot will work best.

Josh:
But I want to show you guys this spring bobber in action. I use anywhere between four to six pound test for pan fish. Four is pretty much good enough for most things, unless you have either pike or a lot of [inaudible 00:04:08] that like to bite you off. We're going to use bass [inaudible 00:04:12] or a little mousey plastic. We're just going to tip that jig real quick. I'll show you when it's done. It's hard to show. But that's the setup. That tail will kind of straighten out when it gets down there.

Josh:
Let's plop up down there, see if we can catch some fish. This whole, the whole concept of the spring bobber is to feel even the slightest little bite, so even my heartbeat is making move. It's standing right there and it's just the slightest little bite from anything, that will go down. When you set the hook, your rod is doing the rest of the work. That'll just cave in and you'll be able to set the hook quick.

Josh:
All right. We got fish on the screen. Got him. Did you guys see that? A little spring bobber action right there. It's not a monster bass, but it's a bass for sure guys. Pinned him right in the top of the mouth right there. That's why I was being so finicky, little largey. Let's get back down there and do that again.

Josh:
This spring bobber is actually length adjustable. You can actually just push the metal rod. This is probably basically just spring steel or some of them are just stainless steel basically. You might have a whole bunch of fish down there right now. I'm going to mark this spot. This jig is so small, I can barely see it. Sometimes what I'll do, I'll just dead stick the rod like that and hope you guys can see that against my chest there. It's right there. Usually what happens with the dead stick technique and the spring bobber is once you drop that down there, the line's spiraling down the way down there and so the jig is sitting there spinning and they really do not like that. The dead stick technique lets it spin naturally and stop. Then you can just jig it by hand obviously.

Josh:
Then some perch, they just like the dead stick. They just like it to be there for them, easy to eat. They won't even bother chasing sometimes unless they're really fired up.

Josh:
All right guys, there's a fired up fish down there for sure. It's coming up right now. Watch, watch, watch. Missed him. Pulled it out of his mouth. These guys are super light biting right now. There we go. Hope you guys saw that. That is the huge advantage to a spring bobber. What is this? That's why. Remember when I was saying about little bluegill, sun fish in this case? They just barely inhale that in there and it's super hard to feel. I got cold hands, but that spring bobber is super easy to see. That's how you catch any fish basically.

Josh:
This is why you guys should be using a spring bobber for finicky fish. If you're a new ice fisher ... See right there? Just missed one. Finicky fish, people that have less sensitivity in your hands or are really cheap rod like mine, this is made for lakers. It's super stiff. But as soon as you put that spring bobber on there, you can see even the smallest fish. This is a little bit bigger. I'm not sure what this is.

Josh:
But if you want to get your Sitka spring bobber, like the one I'm using, there'll be a link below. It's also in the January Monsterbass kit, of course. They're a fantastic tool. I learned to ice fish with them. Thank you very much for watching. I hope you guys enjoyed the how-to video.