Beads For Steel, Too

The discussion, where we left off, centered on beads. A plastic bead pegged to a fluorocarbon leader, to be exact. Drifting along under a float, with weight well away from it, a bead probably follows the path a single egg would, to some extent. At some point, eggs fall to bottom, being slightly toward the heavy side of neutral buoyancy. But so is a bead.

Today a friend asked, "Were you drifting those beads under a float, or bouncing them along on bottom?"

"Were you raised by cows?" A bead on a bottom rig would just r0ll along on bottom. Not saying steelhead don't pick things up off bottom, but having it over their head or at eye level would be preferred. "We were float fishing, you complete ishkabibble."

The fish above was taken on a pale orange bead that glows. I wish I could reveal the name of the company, because they make them specifically for this purpose (as opposed to stringing them up to make a necklace and calling it a craft).

Tell you what. Call Kevin Morlock. This is his bead box. That little one that's closed on the lower left? That's mine. It's available through P-Line. They call it their Trout Fishing Bead Assortment. Catchy. It's very nice, but the one I have doesn't include the size they were biting on. 

Which brings up another problem. How do we describe the different sizes? I'm sure somebody's applied a caliper to the situation. I hope they write in and straighten this out. P-Line offers about 20 different colors and, last time I checked, two different sizes — all of which worked just fine in Alaska. I hate to be elitist, but the fish of Michigan tend to be a tad more discriminating.

We need more colors! And more sizes! And I'm sure they're out there, but a store famous among walleye fishermen here in Brainerd — the Bead Box — just closed its doors (probably because their only customers were walleye fishermen and you know how cheap they can be). They had some awesome beads so (nudge-nudge) take a peak in the local craft store. (And buy something, for trout sake). I'm sure I'll discover who's hawking them to fishermen just in time to divulge it in another full-length feature for In-Fisherman. Hey. Quiet in the cheap seats. I have to leave something to write about at length.

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And ok, yes, I've been out on the ice a few times. Manana.