Pike Floats : Make your own Pike Floats
Pike Floats working out expensive for you too….? Well a few months ago i thought to myself about following others and making my own pike floats for deadbait fishing and also for bob floats for when livebaiting.
First up were deadbait floats, and i even impressed myself! I purchased a few strips of balsa doweling 3/4″ from the local art and craft shop. I think 3 strips were £1.80. Enough to make six floats as each was 12″ long. I cut them all in half and with some fine sandpaper began to round off the ends. This took little more than 5 minutes per float. After half an hour they were all ready for painting. I drilled a tiny hole in each and inserted a size 8 swivel ( next time i will try 10’s ) Then after supergluing them tight I painted the entire float with white exterior glass that we had lying about in the garage and left them to dry for the night. The next morning i masking taped them at the approxiamate half way point of the float, and proceeded to painted orange tops to them with some day-glo acrylic paint i found for £1.50 for a tube. I barely used any in painting them all. Another day went by to let them set and i coated them from head to toe in exterior gloss varnish £4.99 a pot ( plenty to easily do atleast a 100 floats ).
I was astonished at just how easy the whole process was. And cost savings that are unbelievable! A normal pike deadbait float retails at around £2.
My costs were :
- Piece of balsa required for float 30p
- Swivel 10p
- Paint 5p worth of dayglo orange (estimated - probably even less)
- Exterior Vanish 5p (estimated on amount used)
Total cost - 50p
I think you will agree that it is more than worthwhile to try it yourself! Let me know how you get on and i will try to post pictures soon!
Next week i’m going to try making my own pike bob float, for paternoster and roving livebait rigs!!!
