While fishing with bobbers dates back to the early days of angling, fishing for walleyes with slipfloats has a more recent and well documented heritage. Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota is the hands-down birthplace and proving ground for bobber ‘eyes. Granted, the broad tactic is applied elsewhere. But chances are that any variation in popular use today was initially rigged and refined on Mille Lacs’ windswept waters, where rocky reefs rising near the turbulent surface draw walleyes shallow to feed amidst wave-tossed boulders in waist-deep water. Places where snags abound, where the challenge becomes maintaining a bait in the fish zone without fouling bottom and losing lures. In other words, an ideal situation for livebait suspended beneath a float.

In classic application, anglers anchor just above the upwind side of a windswept reef top, shoreline point, or other shallow obstruction, within easy casting distance for drifting a slipfloat baited with a leech downwind, across the tops of the rocks. While fishing a mere foot or two deep could easily be accomplished with a traditional fixed bobber attached to the line, the difficulty of casting an unwieldy float rigged to fish 4, 5, 6 feet or deeper cries out for a slipbobber rig, ideally suited for the conditions.

To rig a slipfloat, first insert your main line through the mounting tube of a prerigged string bobber stop. Slip the coiled string off its mount and onto your line. Pull the ends of the string tightly enough to make a knot that will slide along your line under tension between forefinger and thumb, then trim off the excess. Now thread a tiny bead onto the line, and then a slipbobber, which is basically a float with a hollow stem that allows your bobber to slide up and down the line. Now tie on a split shot and hook, or a small jighead, and you’re ready to bait up.

The mechanics of the rig allow the bobber to slide down to the weight when you cast, creating a compact package with a streamlined delivery, rather than an errantly tumbling trajectory fraught with tangles. When the rig kerplunks into the water, the weight pulls the line down through the slipfloat, cascading downward until the tiny string bobber stop and bead strike the top of the bobber, halting the bait’s descent. Voila! Livebait suspended at whatever depth you wish. Simply grip the bobber stop and slide it up or down your line to set the desired depth, generally inches above bottom at whatever depth you choose to fish.

Fine Points

Slipfloats come in all shapes and sizes, with walleye anglers preferring relatively slender floats that reduce the resistance a walleye feels when it pulls down on the line. Large round bobbers are out—too much water resistance. But neither can floats be too thin and slender, of the trendy European finesse style. Floats designed to be fished in the turbulence of 3- to 5-foot waves must still have sufficient buoyancy to remain afloat amidst the turbulence, with adequate profiles to remain visible. Properly weighted, the float package should remain barely buoyant, yet not at such a hair-trigger balance as to dip and disappear under the first wave top. In essence, call it semi-finesse rigging.

Leeches hooked through or near the suction cup, typically on about a #8 Octopus, lightwire round-bend (Aberdeen) or similarly sized wide-bend (Kahle) hook are the most popular option. The hook must be small and sharp, adequate to land a walleye without excessive bulk and weight that would retard the natural swimming attractiveness of the leech. About two feet above the bait, attach a sufficient number of small split shot to both sink the bait and reduce the buoyancy of the rig to a level of easy bite detection without undue disappearance in big waves. For further experimentation, try minnows hooked below the dorsal fin, or crawlers hooked through the collar, adjusting hook size to match the bait.

Float fishing semi-finesse calls for wide sweeping casts with long rods to sail the bait toward its target, to lift up slack off the water, and tighten the line on the hookset; actually, you just tighten the line and start the tiny hook point penetrating the walleye’s jaw, eventually working its way in past the barb under tension. Seven-foot-plus light-action spinning rods, typically spooled with 4- to 6-pound supple clear monofilament, provide the best combination of castability, cushion, and performance for floats. For afficionados, longer steelheading rods up to the likes of St. Croix’s 13-foot AST130MLF2 provide the ultimate in slipfloat control.

For clear water and spooky fish, plain hooks tend to excel, providing a smaller target and a softer up-down action in waves. But in dingy water or turbulent conditions, tiny 1/32-ounce fluorescent orange or yellow jigheads add a spot of color to help focus the strike at the hook and enhance the bait’s dance each time the float proceeds from wave crest to trough. For night fishing, use phosphorescent jigheads and either lighted (via a tiny lithium battery or light stick) or glow-in-the-dark floats.

How Deep?

The unappreciated dimension of slipfloats is that they work at all depths—not just in the relative shallows. Anglers tend to use them where they can see shallow wave disturbance, setting the depth of the bobber stop by guessing, and then drifting the bait shallow to see what happens. If it snags or frequently comes to rest, it’s set too deep. If it drifts clean on through, it’s probably an effective pass, but it pays to try mild adjustments. If a float occasionally brushes bottom, which you can tell when the float briefly pauses and leans over before resuming its drift, you’re in the fish zone.

But what about deeper areas: deep reef tops, deep points, and drop-offs? Best ask the bobber doctor.

PWT pro Dr. Bruce Samson is one of the original Mille Lacs slipbobber brigade, and Doc Bruce has hoisted many a big walleye from amidst shallow boulder piles pounded by big waves. Folks outside the tournament game fail to realize how effectively he applies slipfloats in deeper areas.

“When I fish deep points or humps without many rocks, I prefer to vertically livebait rig the edges. But on deep reefs with loads of rocks and snags, slipbobbers don’t snag, providing a huge advantage for fishing key concentrations of walleyes.

“The secret to fishing reefs is to understand what each reef looks like. You need to form a mental picture of the reef to pick the best spot. It might be a little point or high spot, or the spot with the most rocks.

“I usually fish reef tops, scouting them with my electronics prior to fishing and throwing a floating marker to indicate the prime spot to fish. If you fish the edges of deep reefs, throw more buoys to provide a visual orientation. Fishing edges where fish spread out is harder to do than fishing the ultimate peak of the reef, because it’s difficult to keep a slipbobber positioned along the edge of a reef, although it can be done.

“I search the tops of 15-, 20-, 25-foot-deep reefs with my Lowrance X-16 to see the structure and determine where the fish are sitting. If you see fish, anchor. But you can’t see them all the time, because they may move down among the boulders. If a spot has potential, anchor upwind and give it a few good drifts.

“To set your depth prior to anchoring, simply drift over the top of the fish, attach a heavy weight (like an ice fishing depthfinder weight) to your lure, and send it to bottom. When the bobber plunges beneath the surface, pick up the line and slide the bobber stop upward. It might take a few adjustments, but eventually, get the bait to suspend a foot or so above bottom in the key spot, in perfect position to tempt walleyes.

“I use leeches on 1/32-ounce Northland Gum-Ball Jigs most of the time. Add enough split shot to the line several feet above the jig to get the bait down quickly, yet not so much as to overweight the float. In calm weather, you should be able to detect the bobber rise slightly when a walleye swims up and inhales the leech. In rough seas, you just have to wait for the bobber to go down.”

Give ‘Em The Slip

Mille Lacs anglers experiment with catching walleyes atop and along the edges of 24- to 34-foot-deep mudflats, and even suspended out to the sides of the mudflats.

Elsewhere, they can be fished over the tops of weedbeds, along the edges of bogs in flowages, and alongside flooded timber. Or drift them through eddies in rivers.

Admittedly, you can’t cover a lot of water quickly with a float, but you can definitely strain a small high-percentage spot.