What’s your favorite float?

[The Rooster]

I have time to tinker today. So I was reorganizing some of my tackle. Started looking at my floats and noticed a few things.

First, those Thill floats on the far left in the pic with all the floats together. They are a combination slip float and spring clip on float. But on closer inspection, the slot under the spring is extremely rough on one of them. It’s not cut too well on one of the others either. It was just cut in at an angle and left very rough at the bottom. Used on light line I think this would be a problem. I greatly prefer the L shaped cut on the other spring clip on floats. I also recall that these slip floats each came with a pre-rigged stop knot that you could slide off the top of the float and onto the line. These knots didn’t stop the bead though, it would go right over it. But the little pack of stop knots I bought separately worked great. I’m not sure why, but now that I’ve had this experience I won’t be buying anymore of those specific Thill floats. They were not cheap, about $4 each, and the only use they’ll be is for slip floats now. They’re not even my favorite. I like the foam Comal slip floats better. There’s a little yellow one shown there. I found it out on the lake. Turns out it’s my current favorite.

Then there’s the foam Bett’s and Comal cigar shaped peg floats in the lower right hand corner of the pic. They appear to be made for pegging and for slip float use, but the pegs in them are put together in two pieces, and the cap does not always line up. One is so far off the line didn’t go through it easily and I had to drill it out some. I was using it on 8 pound line at the time. It may have been fine on lighter line. But also notice the two tiny yellow and green pear shaped floats above those two Bett’s floats. Those are the Leland’s Lures Trout Magnet EZ Float. The pegs in those are made a good bit better. I also have some larger cigar floats that came in a Crappie Magnet kit. Same deal, made much better. These are details that matter to me, since I’m trying to learn to fish for crappie I want as little frustration as possible so when things don’t work I know it’s because of me not doing something just right and not because of the equipment. Looking closely at these today I have learned that in the future I need to pay more attention to the floats and how they’re made. Spending a lot on a float apparently does not mean it is a good one.

Lastly, what is the purpose of that orange and black float having the weight? I know it would make it cast better, but I’ve watched about a hundred crappie fishing videos at least, maybe 200, and nobody has used a float like that. It seems it would actually be counterproductive based on some of the methods I’ve seen used. When crappie hit the bait on the drop and swim upwards, I wouldn’t even know because the float would just be sitting there pointing straight up. This is another float I found on the lake. I tend to do that a lot. I have quite a collection now of found and saved floats.

So what floats do you use and why?