Why beads fishing

Some days it's all about the color right down to the beads. Increase your success by having a few harnesses tied up with solid color opaque beads. Jann's Netcraft Pro Eye swirl plastic beads add unique color combinations to your crawler harness rigs and fishing lures.

Size 6mm. Tee beads are made of durable fluorescent plastic. Tee beads are used to make salmon tee spinners. Pack size Netcraft ProEye 3D lure beads have a shiny glass-like appearance reminding us of the marbles we had as kids.

Glow Beads. Round glow beads can be exposed to a light source to give off a luminescent glow that attracts fish. Then, simply break the toothpick off at the bead eye. This rig can be fished like a nymph, either high-sticked through fishy runs or even under an indicator. The set-up is effective — it might be the best way to catch egg-eating trout and char when eggs are in the water. But the real reason I like this method is that it almost never results in a fish being hooked deep.

Fishing with beads for steelhead is no different than fishing with beads for trout or salmon unless the water that you are fishing is different. Very small trout streams may require a slightly different setup and presentation in a 5 foot by 5-foot spot that is only 2 feet deep, compared to a bigger steelhead spot that has lots of current speed in a 20 foot wide, foot long spot. The float allows me to drift the beads down to the fish, control the speed of the bait, and it allows me to cover the water well.

Check out my float fishing page so you know how to do this well. If you are going to use a float, which to some is known as a bobber I recommend using the right bobber size and style. If you use the wrong float you may limit how many fish you will catch. Check out my Best Floats page.

Fishing with beads is a great way to catch steelhead but because trout rivers can be much smaller and will require adjustments in your presentation and in your setup so you catch more trout. You can see how to do this on my page on Bottom Bouncing. With the advanced bottom bouncing method, you can easily adjust for shallow waters that are 1 foot deep to spots that are over 4 feet deep with nothing more than lifting and lowering your rod tip.

You are also able to fish 3 foot long pockets or 25 foot long pools. Plastic beads are by far the most common types of steelhead beads because they are readily available and they are cheaper than glass beads. Some anglers swear that glass beads are much better at catching trout and steelhead than plastic beads, and in my opinion, glass beads probably are better than plastic beads, but only because of a fault in the anglers presentation.

Glass beads are much heavier than plastic beads and I do not believe that glass beads are any better than plastic beads for any other reason then they sink and get into the strike zone faster and they stay there longer. If that is the true reason why glass beads are catching more fish, then anglers that are catching more fish on glass beads should take this as a hint that there is something wrong with the way that they present their other baits and they need to fix that fault so that they can catch more fish on all their other baits too.

If you have to rely on a heavy bait to catch more fish you may be missing out on fish with other bait. Other than the weight, glass beads and plastic beads are the same! They feel the same, they even look identical to me and to the fish, they are both hard as a rock, and they both do not have a scent that would attract more fish. There is no other reason for glass beads catching more fish than the plastic beads except for them getting deeper or maybe having a slightly different sound when bumping the rocks on the bottom which could be a possibility except that anglers fishing sandy bottom rivers with glass beads also claim better results with glass beads.

If you are catching more fish on glass beads I recommend considering increasing your depths with other baits and getting those baits deeper with more weight which will likely improve your success with them.

This may mean your will need to set up your leaders better so you can get any bait down and deeper like the heavy glass beads do. Check out my leader setup page. Bead colors and sizes can make a big difference when fishing with beads and will affect how many fish you catch.

On clear water, I use a smaller bead and in more natural colors, and in dirty water I will use bright colors and bigger beads. When fishing with beads I change my sizes based on the conditions. See the chart below for sizing and the best colors to use.

Clear Water Size: 6mm and 8mm. You can secure the beads to the line using what are called rubber bead pegs. You can also secure the bead with a toothpick, or with bobber stops, or even with small rubber bands. For proper bead placement see below in the bead rigs section.

Check out the rubber band method on YouTube. If you like this method you will need this banding tool from FishUSA. There are also some knots that anglers will use to secure the beads to the line.

You can see the bead knot method on YouTube. I put all my beads in a trout bead box. Soft steelhead beads or made out of softer plastic or rubber and can also be a good bait for catching catch trout, steelhead, and salmon. Soft steelhead beads go on the hook instead of the on the line and can be removed and changed more easily than hard beads. Trout and steelhead may hold onto soft beads longer but they may also see the hook easier through the translucent bead and then avoid eating the soft beads.

His beads are next level. In the past when fishing single Jensen eggs directly on the hook I used a small veil of white wool in the bait loop above the egg and found that it resulted in the fish holding the hook longer. Now fishing with pegged soft beads I'm seeing more missed fish. Not sure what is the best solution. Thanks for the replies. Did a garage experiment last night. Filled a tall glass with water and dropped same size hard vs soft bead in the glass at the same time and watched which sunk faster.

Generally not much difference but a few times I'd say the soft dropped faster. Definitely not a big difference between the two. Overall I just "like" the soft beads more and will probably stick to fishing these mostly when I'm in a bead mood. Do ya'll run a leader about the same as you'd fish roe? Or go longer to get the bead moving around more? Personally, unless I'm fishing pretty froggy water, I feel a soft or hard bead on a leader over 20 inches is likely riding up above your lead.

So I stick in the inch-ish range depending on water clarity and speed. Stratocaster Old Timer Offline Posts: I only fish plastic beads. I like the dead egg look you get when white is added to the plastic.