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Bolo floats

Lee Backshall

Lee Backshall

Senior Member
Having recent bought some Bolo floats of various brands I can't help but feel they're too long ......like the bodies seem really long especially on the hybrid ones and then the stems seem very thin and long .......should I be looking at shorter floats especially in the stem I.e shorter but thicker wire....can't help.but think these long ones are gonna be a whole load of bother.......am I thinking nonsense or not?
 
Lee Backshall said:
Having recent bought some Bolo floats of various brands I can't help but feel they're too long ......like the bodies seem really long especially on the hybrid ones and then the stems seem very thin and long .......should I be looking at shorter floats especially in the stem I.e shorter but thicker wire....can't help.but think these long ones are gonna be a whole load of bother.......am I thinking nonsense or not?
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I’ve cut loads of them down before but only when the float itself is so long it doesn’t leave enough room to present a rig properly under it for the shallow depth I want to fish at. A particular stream I fish for grayling has some good swims that are just a foot to 18 inch in depth. It doesn’t leave you much choice but to cut the float down or have the Olivette hanging off the bottom of the float stem
 
Rather than cut a stem down I would use a different float, a drennan loafer as an example.

I use a long stemmed bolo in water as shallow as 18 inches with no problems at all.At the end of the day depending on how your fishing, your bait is gonna precede your float or be behind it.
 
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It all depends on the depth you are fishing, if you are fishing over 5ftt deep then a long stem will steady the float better than a short stem which makes it easier to slow down or hold back if needed. If I fish big floats like Bolos I am sometimes 3ft overdepth and dragging through or holding back heavily well overdepth with the bait at a low angle to the float. The long stem sits the float at the the correct angle for the float body. I honestly think fishing a big float like a Bolo in shallow water (under 5ft) is wrong and will cost you fish. Not just the fact the float is easily visible to fish but also it makes more splash. Its much better to fish other types of float like a loafer, Balsa or stick in shallow water. I never get tangles on big floats like Bolos with long stems. I use Tungsten tubing or non toxic solder as a bulk rather than swan or AAA's.
 
I routinely cut down bolo floats. However, five feet is a pretty deep swim on the rivers, or parts of rivers, I'm fishing regularly. I don't think I have a single bolo float that I've not taken at least a couple of centimetres off.

However, any problems you might foresee with long floats is likely to be overthinking. I've never had a problem fishing long floats in water that's deep enough for them. If your train of thought is that long floats might result in tangles, I've found the opposite to be true.

If I wasn't fishing water at the shallow end of the spectrum, I wouldn't be shortening floats. Short floats in deeper water can be a pain. They can also lack stability in broken or boily water. For these reasons (and others) I've never really understood the huge popularity of Drennan Loafers. It's also why the longevity of the Loafers puzzles me when Long Loafers (a Loafer with a stem like a Crystal Avon) lasted such a relatively short time that they passed many people by.

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