Fishing Forum

I use glow sticks for night fishing, but finding good ones at the store is always a crap shoot. Glow sticks have a shelf life of about two years. During the last few years, I've taken to buying them on eBay.

Usually they run around $8 for 40, but a couple of sellers seem to be having a price war at the moment. 37 mm glow sticks are down to 50 for a little over three bucks shipped. Just got my set today, and they have a manufacturing date of October 2013 stamped on the package. Not sure if the board regs prohibit linking to auctions, but if you search for fishing glow sticks and sort by price you'll find them pretty easily.

Sure beats paying $2+ for a couple of sticks that might be dead on the pegs.
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So how do you use them? IN the water? how deep?
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If your talking about putting them on the poles to see bites I use to do that then i switched to bomber lights or battery lights after playing around with them on my bowfishing arrows and they work fantastic for arrows too . I use them mainly at night for sturgeon.


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People sometimes use them for ice fishing and vertical jigging, but I've never tried that.

I use them on bobbers. The Thill bobbers with the stub on top will take a 37mm glow stick. The packages of sticks come with a little piece of aquarium tubing you use as a connector.

Rod & Bob makes a series of floats called the Revolution X that has a clear tube as the post. It has a little red cap you slide off and a glow stick goes inside. I haven't been able to find any locally, but you can order them online.

There's a lot of import floats that you can buy off eBay that have this feature as well. The European and Asian anglers are really serious about their float fishing. There's about a billion different types of every imaginable length, size and shape. I recently bought some bobbers with a removable post that you can replace with a 37mm glow stick, but I haven't tried them yet.
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[quote drowning_flys]If your talking about putting them on the poles to see bites I use to do that then i switched to bomber lights or battery lights after playing around with them on my bowfishing arrows and they work fantastic for arrows too . I use them mainly at night for sturgeon.

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I use electric floats when I'm only expecting to be out for a few hours after dark, but I often fish all night so they're not really cost effective. Especially when I forget to turn them off in the tackle box. Nothing like finding you've wasted almost five bucks and have nothing to fish with because you forgot to turn the damn thing off last time.

The Thill Splash Brites don't have the battery wasting problem, but the batteries aren't replaceable so once they're dead you have to buy another float at six bucks a pop.

I use these for putting on poles:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IETXbM6QBxE

They run about $2.50 on eBay and take coin batteries, which are much, much cheaper. Flashes green at rest, red when you get a bite.
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I just put them right on the end of the pole with shrink tubing and if you can find blue fox brand or even the Chinese knock offs there only a couple bucks apiece last time i bought them at walmart . They last quite a while.


Those look great too [cool]
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Never seen the cheap ones, unfortunately.

What I'm doing now works for me, though. When you get fresh glow sticks, they're REALLY bright. I can easily see them from a good 50-75 feet away. Really important when you're making long casts.

The bite lights are pretty damn cool. They come with two different bases, so you can use them on smaller rods and the honking big surf casters most shorebound folks use for sturgeon. They have a little button on the bottom side that presses against the rod and turns them on, so you don't have to worry about the batteries draining on you.

When I'm fishing for crappie from shore in the spring and summer, I'll be casting one rod with a glow stick and have the other set up for cats with a bite light in a rod holder.
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