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[Jewelz]

bright sunny day

Wow! I never thought of it that way... The yellow top sticks out like crazy.

[Dave]

I'm with JC on this .. I guess I have seen the evolution of floats on the Vedder after 50 plus years of fishing it.  The first were big, ugly split-side wooden jobs, brown bottom, red top ,that had a nasty habit of falling off your line sometime during the day.  To a kid that often used rocks or wheel nuts for weights, losing a float was serious bad news ... and any found float was a gift, as my friend Chris knows. Next came the ping-pong ball floats crafted by George Friskie, perhaps the most innovative Vedder River angler of the era and arguably to this day.  They were a work of art and floated a big chunk of lead and a big gob of bait but were fragile, prone to leaks and a bitch to cast. 
We soon started carving dense foam fishing net floats, along with balsa and cedar.  After varnishing and painting, these floats were obviously very labour intensive and it hurt big time when the crappy mono lines of the day failed ...  it was always the line, never the angler...  and the prized float drifted away.
Finally, foam dink floats came on the scene, first the big fatties an inch wide, 8 inches long and wound on the line with one or two turns...total garbage, imo ...  and then big expensive plastic torpedoes with interesting names, that again, are fragile and are often seen abandoned on river banks....

Nah, give me a 6”, ½ “ wide straight thru foam dinker, top painted orange/green anyday.  Will float all I want to throw, and as JC says, is easy to retrieve.  And cheap

[Noahs Arc]

bright sunny day

Baaaaah that light bulb is blinding me!!!

[Jewelz]

I know right! I'm switching for sure.

[blaydRnr]

wayyy too much emphasis on float visibility...with all the debris floating down the river, i'm sure it doesn't make that big of a difference...i would focus more on line visibility before anything else.

[Bently]

I've caught just as many fish using a 99 cent dink float as I have using a $5 fancy one.

You guys make way too much out of all of this. Just my opinion 

Guys that use expensive floats all the time probably buy all those gadgets on TV too, like the shamwow.

[canso]

You need to be confident with your gear. I rarely loose floats, and enjoy fishing with nice floats.
Nicer floats add some weight for the cast.

[Noahs Arc]

I was chatting with an older fella I see on the river from time to time today, and he uses a piece of foam strapped to his mainline with some red duct tape wrapped around one end.

[Trout_Bum]

Thanks everyone for the great input to my original post. What iI will be taking away from this is that there are many float types and that it boils down to personal preference. I will be trying a DNE 25 gram foam float, white body with red top. This should allow best visibility in low light conditions for my tired old eyes.

Trout Bum

[Sterling C]

How many people here have REAL experience with floats and their effects on fish? Because to me this all sounds like a bunch of hearsay.

I've personally fished over large schools of coho in clear water only to watch the school literally part down the middle like the Red Sea to avoid my presentation. I tried everything from lighter and longer leaders, using micro split shot, same results.

Finally, I cut off all my terminal tackle and drifted just my float over the fish, interestingly enough, the fish still dodged just the float.

My solution to the issue was my roll of duct tape in my truck. I covered up 90% of the red on top of my float with the duct tape, retied with my normal gear and voila, not only did the fish not dodge my gear but they started biting.

For the record, I was using a grey 35g DNE and was fishing in over 10ft of water.

[chris gadsden]

How many people here have REAL experience with floats and their effects on fish? Because to me this all sounds like a bunch of hearsay.

I've personally fished over large schools of coho in clear water only to watch the school literally part down the middle like the Red Sea to avoid my presentation. I tried everything from lighter and longer leaders, using micro split shot, same results.

Finally, I cut off all my terminal tackle and drifted just my float over the fish, interestingly enough, the fish still dodged just the float.

My solution to the issue was my roll of duct tape in my truck. I covered up 90% of the red on top of my float with the duct tape, retied with my normal gear and voila, not only did the fish not dodge my gear but they started biting.

For the record, I was using a grey 35g DNE and was fishing in over 10ft of water.

Red Green will be proud of you.

[Johnny Canuck]

Baaaaah that light bulb is blinding me!!!

If the painted part of the float was out of the water the light would then be able to enter the float and it would reflect the light like a vehicles headlight.

[Noahs Arc]

If the painted part of the float was out of the water the light would then be able to enter the float and it would reflect the light like a vehicles headlight.

I've used dne or whatever I came across for the longest time.
This year for the start of coho when the river was super low I switched to cleardrift and my hookups increased instantly.
Call it luck or whatever, but an angler must have confidence in their gear when fishing.
The increase in September hookups for me made me a convert. Now I've always got a cleardrift on during low water conditions.

[Dennis.t]

I was chatting with an older fella I see on the river from time to time today, and he uses a piece of foam strapped to his mainline with some red duct tape wrapped around one end.

Seriously? How does he adjust his float on his mainline for the water depth hes fishing?

[big_fish]

I often chuckle when people say they feel the need to buy a Clear Drift to improve their fishing. They are just cheap knock-offs of Drennan. The plastic is thicker, the material is more rigid so easier to crack. u might get them for half the price, but u end up buying more to make up for it. how come Drennan hasnt come after Clear Drift because i'm sure they have a patent on the design? maybe it's because the product is from China?

A good foam float at a much lower price like DNE does the job just fine. if u cant catch fish with a DNE, then u definitely wont catch fish with a Clear Drift.