The Evolution of Bobber Stoppers

When I started bass fishing, I pegged my slip sinkers with wooden toothpicks. As time went by, I began using short pieces of rubber bands. And now, some 50 years later, I find myself reaching for bobber stoppers to peg the slip sinkers on my plastic baits.

The bobber stopper, I assume, got its name from originally being designed to hold corks and bobbers in position for anglers fishing with live bait. Now, though, bass anglers everywhere use these devices in several different ways.

One such use, according to Wired2Fish scribe Shaye Baker, "is with a light Carolina rig, or split-shot rig, when you're wanting to drag a bait over a flat, through submerged vegetation, or along seawalls. For this type of stuff, you don't need a big, heavy weight and a 4-foot leader like you might when fishing a Carolina rig out deeper. We're talking more like something around a 1/4-ounce weight and a 12-to-18-inch leader.

"But if you put this rig together like a traditional Carolina rig with a swivel," said Baker, "you're locked in on the length of your leader unless you retie. Instead, I like to take a bobber stopper and slide it up my main line, followed by a VMC tungsten weight and then another bobber stopper. Tie a 4/0 EWG hook on, and now you have a lightweight Carolina rig that you can adjust the leader length of by simply sliding the two bobber stoppers and weight. The really cool thing is you actually can slide the setup all the way down to the eye of the hook and go from a Carolina rig to a light-weight Texas rig and then back again, without ever retying if you want.

"The limitations of this rig come when you move up to heavier weights or down to lighter lines. The heavier weights will cause the bobber stoppers to slide down the line on the cast. Likewise, the bobber stoppers won't grip 10-pound-test line as well as 15-pound-test. However, there are different sized bobber stoppers for that very reason. Smaller sizes will hold onto bigger diameter line even better against the pressure of the weight in your back cast. But you don't want to go all the way to a bobber stopper rated for an 8-pound-diameter line, for example, with 17-pound test because that big of a difference can actually lead to the line ripping through the bobber stopper.

"If your weight continues to slip, and you only have one size of bobber stopper, you also can try stacking two bobber stoppers on either side of the weight, and that will usually do the trick."

Another use of bobber stoppers comes from professional angler John Cox, who always snugs two of these devices against the eye of his Berkley Spin Rocket.

"I use these bobber stoppers to keep my braided line out of the prop of my topwater. A lot of anglers prefer throwing prop-style topwaters on braided line to increase the distance they can throw the bait. The braid also comes in handy when battling big bass that try to bury up in dense vegetation. But the drawback of the limp braid is that it gets tangled up in the front prop of a bait like this between twitches. Then the bait has to be retrieved in order to untangle the line from the prop.

"One solution many anglers use is a braid-to-monofilament leader. The stiffer monofilament stands out and doesn't get tangled in the prop as the lure moves toward you, but you still get the benefits of a braided main line. The drawback here is that you're adding another knot between the angler and the fish, which increases the work when rigging the lure and adds one more potential point of failure."

One other method some anglers use with prop-style topwaters, to keep them from tangling, is a 6-inch steel leader. I used one of those leaders for a short spell several years ago with some success, but they didn't prove to be 100 percent effective.

Another useful purpose of bobber stoppers...for those anglers who own rods with micro guides, anyway...is to slide a bobber stopper on the tag end of your line and reel that up to your rod tip, slide the rod in a rod glove, and now it's ready to go until you need it again, without wasting a single inch of line. The same thing can be done to store reels with smaller diameter guides on them. For any other rod or reel where a bobber stopper alone won't do the trick, you can keep a few pieces of cork in your rod locker to do the same thing. Just put the cork on first, then add the bobber stopper, and your setup will be there when you need it.

As Shaye Baker remarked, "I really believe that bobber stoppers are one of the more underutilized tools available to bass anglers. They're probably the cheapest bass-fishing tackle you can possibly buy, but that minuscule purchase can make an enormous difference on the water. With these small pieces of rubber, you'll be able to rig a quick Carolina rig, fish topwaters with less hassle, and store your rods and reels easier. For just a few bucks, that's some serious value."