Article by Sue Foster
To “Bobber” or not to “Bobber”, that is the question! When you fish in the bay, should you use a bobber? Kids always seem to want to use bobbers. Should you give them one? When you go surf fishing, should you have a Styrofoam cork on next to your hook or go “el natural”?
There are all kinds of bobbers. There are plastic bobbers, cork bobbers, weighted and non-weighted floats, little bobbers, rattling and glow-in-the-dark bobbers, and really big bobbers. Decisions, decisions….
Most of the time, when fishing in our Coastal Bays, you do not need a bobber. Flounder are bottom feeders and you want your bait on or close to the bottom. Other fish we catch in the bay, including spot, croaker, trout, and stripers, are usually close to the bottom. Even bluefish tend to stick close to the bottom floor during the daylight hours. When drifting in your boat, or casting off a pier, you don’t need a bobber or any floats on your rigs.
“I see people using big bobbers and floats on the Route 50 Bridge!”
This is one instance where using a bobber works really well. Anglers use a large 2 ½ inch plastic bobber, a large Styrofoam float, or a tubular float that is anywhere from 8 to 12 inches long. Anglers set up with a spreader type flounder rig where a two-ounce sinker is put on the sinker clip in the center of the spreader, and two leadered hooks are placed on each side of the sinker. These two hooks hang down below the sinker and drag the bottom floor. The angler attaches the bobber or float three-to-five feet above the spreader rig and actually lets the float “drift” the rig out over the water. The angler will “play” with the bobber, setting it so the hooks just barely touch the bottom. If you are fishing and lose no baits to fish or crabs, you are probably not close enough to the bottom. If you start dragging up stuff like gobs of bottom grasses and horseshoe crabs, and your rig is not “drifting” you are too close to the bottom!
Be careful when doing this. Boats coming by can cut off your rigs. If you see a boat coming towards your floats, reel in quickly until it passes by. Most “bobber” anglers don’t fish the main deep channels (too many boats), but fish close to the sandbars in the center of the bridge. On flood high tide, flounder will come up on the underwater sandbars to feed. The slightly deeper water, right next to the underwater bar, is the perfect place to “drift”.
“When I go to the tackle store, I see all these rigs with brightly colored Styrofoam floats. What are these for?”
An elementary rule of thumb for beginners is that rigs with floats are for “surf casting” off the beach, and rigs without floats are for fishing in the bay. Angler’s surf casting off the beach do well to have surf floats positioned right next to their hooks. The reason for this is three-fold.
1. The brightly colored (red, green, yellow) floats make the bait more visible to the fish.
2. When you are fishing in the surf with a plain hook and sinker, the wave action can actually bury your bait if you don’t keep it moving.
3. The surf floats keep your hooks off the bottom so the crabs don’t eat the bait off your hook so quickly.
One will find that the high/low type rigs will still be found by crabs, especially the bottom hook. If you fish with a single, long-leadered type surf rig such as a “finger mullet rig” the crabs can’t reach up to that 24-to 30-inches to chew off your bait. If you are one of those people that want to throw the bait out there, put the rod in the rod holder and not check your bait very often, use the single rigs with a pretty good sized Styrofoam float!
When you become a more experienced surf angler, you will find that there are times/species of fish where you DO NOT want a surf float. These species would be stripers, flounder, and drum. Stripers tend to be shy of the colors and prefer a simple high/low rig or a plain hook on a fish finder rig. When fishing without floats, you have to check your bait often and/or use a big bait. That’s why a whole bunker head is so popular for stripers. It’s not necessarily the best part of the bunker, but it stays on the hook for a long time.
Since flounder are bottom feeders, you are best to use a plain hook on either a fish finder type rig or a high/low rig. It’s best to use a strip of fresh bait or squid and cast and slowly retrieve in along the bottom. Drum, which we don’t get many in Ocean City, also tend to like a bobberless hook. In fact, they are usually right in the wash!
Bluefish, sharks, kingfish, spot, trout, and croakers all tend to like the floats in the surf. Especially if you use bloodworm, a little surf float makes that smaller bait more visible. Match your size of the float to your hook. Use a small surf float to a small hook and larger floats with bigger baits and bigger hooks.
“My kids want to use bobbers when fishing for spot off the pier.”
It’s OK for little kids to use bobbers to catch bait spot or other little fish in the lagoons or piers where the water is not moving too fast. Just position the bobbers so the bait is close to the bottom and put a little weight down close to the hook so it hangs near the bottom floor. You can use plastic bobbers or those Styrofoam floats that are weighted because you can cast them. If you don’t get bites, position your bobber so the hook hangs deeper. You want your bait real close to the bottom so the fish see it.
I’ve seen some people use these same types of weighted Styrofoam floats at the inlets to fish close to the rocks without getting hung up. This is something to experiment with, but it makes sense that it would work.
Good fishing!
Sue Foster is an outdoor writer and co-owner of Oyster Bay Tackle in Ocean City, MD and Fenwick Tackle in Fenwick, DE.
