The Acme Tackle Beaver Dam Titanium Tip Ice Rod ($49.95) has a built-in retractable bobber-the only one of its kind-making it adaptable to every size lure the blank can handle. The blank is fast but forgiving-sensitive but tough. The 26-inch version has a built in Nitinol tip (Nitinol is nickel titanium) that telegraphed the lightest crappie bites and held up to larger tungsten jigs. Another one of my favorites last winter was Clam’s Dave Genz Legacy Rod ($99). Several companies incorporated built-in titanium tips on ice rods since the Quiverstick came out. It won’t kink or bend, delivers awesome bite sensitivity, and is stiffer than steel wire with the same diameter. Titanium is, perhaps, the ultimate material for a rod tip or spring bobber. “That’s when spring bobbers come in handy.” “When a fish comes in, I slow down,” he says. A snap of the rod tip lifts the lure 2 feet, with no compromise caused to the action by the spring bobber. A glance at Roach’s video describing How To Fish A Jigging Rapala on his website has underwater footage revealing just how aggressively he prefers to jig when attracting fish. Croix rods he uses these days have fast actions and a stiff tips, so his short, attachable spring bobber can’t deaden the action much, as many old-school ice anglers have demanded for so long. He likes to use a stiff rod to present Jigging Rapalas aggressively under the ice, “so, it’s nice to have a short spring bobber on there as a strike indicator,” he says. Guide Tony Roach has one of the most aggressive styles I’ve ever seen. Spring tips aren’t just for panfish anglers anymore. The Quiverstick tip effectively presents small to midsize Jigging Raps and similar lures like the Lunkerhunt Straight Up. Being able to detect delicate “down bites” is a great benefit, but delivering instant evidence of an “up bite” is one key advantage of titanium. The tip should bend down by at least 10-percent under the weight of the jig, so a fish rising with the bait straightens the tip. Actually, spring bobbers require a jig heavy enough to load the spring to be effective. Some spring bobbers and titanium tips are made with heavier gauge wire that balances better with heavier jigs. Due to the qualities of titanium, spring bobbers and tips can now be adapted to any style. The point, however, is titanium spring bobbers and built-in tips aren’t just for panfish or deadsticks. Besides, once a walleye came in, aggressive jigging would spook it. I thought the tip made it dance just right. It’s a favorite weapon, but was the titanium-stiff and memory free as it is-still too soft to produce the right lure action with a Rapala? It was a “welter weight” model-size 5. So we learned nothing new about contrasting styles, but one of those unknown factors may have been the built-in Titanium REC Recoil tip on my Thorne Brothers Quiverstick ($96.99). One small walleye was caught as conditions or some unknown factor made the fish curious and seemingly active yet reluctant to bite. We were both blanked, though we saw and attempted to trigger more fish than any of the students that day at Martin’s Ice Fishing Vacation School. Sure enough, the big wallow hog slid directly over to his jig and stared while he twitched it in place on bottom. He dropped his jig to bottom and thumped it a couple times. “Now watch this,” Martin said when the first one appeared at my lure. Each walleye that appeared would initially glide right up to the more aggressive attracting qualities of the Rapala.Īnd, invariably, each one would sniff, taste, and nudge the bait but refuse to bite. I fished a Jigging Rapala tipped with a minnow head while Martin fished a jig with a whole minnow. The water, clear as air, allowed us to watch one giant walleye after another come sniffing around our baits. In 11 to 12 feet of water there, no depth finder is required. One day last winter I sat next to famous pro and fishing instructor Mark Martin on Saginaw Bay. One intriguing element is how conditions and other factors can ordain one style today and a different style tomorrow, while people fishing different styles side-by-side sometimes catch equal numbers of fish. In the gray areas between the extremes lay thousands of approaches to simply fishing vertically below a hole in the ice. Some anglers walk the fence, and some jump back-and-forth. One of the most fascinating things about fishing is style.
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