Trash Markers to Fool Fisherman!

By Dave Johnson - Bass Pro Radio.Com

Have you ever been fishing a big weed bed or mile long shoreline with blown down wood and catch a big fish and wonder how to find that exact spot again?  You know that if you throw out an orange marker buoy you are going to have that spot fished by every angler within a four county area.  Consider what we call a trash or camo marker!  It is so simple you will wonder "why didn't I think of that"!

Go around your house and find some small plastic bottles like aspirin or vitamins might come in.  If you can't find any small bottles, you might try Kevin Bishops device (Kevin is the 2001 Wal-Mart BFL, Northeast Angler of the Year) and uses ping pong balls.  Next go to your favorite bait store and by a dozen or so one ounce catfish sinkers.  If you have some big old bolts laying around they will work to.  The last ingredient is some fishing line.  This is where that last little bit of line that you have left on a  filler spool will come in handy.  

This is not rocket science!  Take about 10 feet of line and tie it to the weight, and the other end to the bottle.   The aspirin bottles are a little easier to store as you can wrap the line around the neck of the bottle for storage.  I even loop a small rubber band through the weight and loop the tag end over the neck of the bottle.  This keeps everything from becoming separated during a rough boat ride.

If you like Kevin's idea, he paints the ping balls black and then uses black electrical tape to secure the line to the balls. Kevin uses little paper cups or egg cartons to store his ping pong balls and weights.  

Ok, so now you have these little trash devices!  While fishing big expanses of cover I can unhook the rubber band and throw the weight and bottle a foot or so off center of where I caught that monster fish. This little piece of trash will remind me to cast there during that big tournament.  To everyone else, it looks like somebody had such a bad day of fishin' that they used up all their aspirin and the bottle blew out of their boat.  The only problem is someone just might pick up the trash and wonder how it got tangled with that catfish weight!!  It's better to  have someone pick up some trash then put out a marker beacon for every hawkeyed bass boat in the state!