Little Bit About Me

Let me introduce myself.  I'm Randy, I have been floatfishing with centerpins for a little over 15 years for a variety of fish ranging from salmonids to bass, catfish, carp and panfish.

In that amount of time I became interested in making balsa wood floats when I was fishing to a pod of salmon on the Oak Orchard and seeing them part like the red sea as my Drennan floated by.  As I made a few more drifts and the same thing happened over and over I began to look for a different float.  As I was rummaging through my vest I found one of the very first balsa floats I had ever made.  I attached it to my line and noticed that the fish seemed to ignore the float... Needless to say I hooked only one of them for a brief time but that moment was etched in my mind.

After that day I started searching the net for anything I could find on float fishing.  I viewed sites like www.fishing.co.uk for tutorials on float making.  I also found a great website that had many years ago a forum dedicated to float making, www.maggotdrowning.co.uk.

My first floats were turned on a hand drill and they were very crude and not too pleasing to the eye but... they caught fish and from then on I was addicted.  A couple of years later I  met a Romanian guy who was a very hardcore match fisherman.  He was a pole fisherman something I had never seen here in Northeast Ohio.  He showed me some of the floats he had made and I was amazed at the quality of his floats.  All of them handmade and they looked like floats I could have bought from a high end tackle shop.  After befriending him I learned he also made his own centerpin reels, closed face match reels and the best rod blanks I have seen from old broken blanks.  He had given me one of his old lathes which was nothing more than a sewing machine motor attached to a small 1/4" drill chuck connected by a rubber oring for the belt.  The bed consisted of two steel rods which had a machined dead center.  This lathe made some of the best floats I had made in a very long time.  I had finally made floats that were round and consistent in shape unlike the floats I made on the drill.  Sometime in 2005 I became part of the www.Questoutdoors.net staff and wrote a float making article www.questoutdoors.net/skills/centerpin/articles/float_making/ .  At this time I was making floats as a hobby for my own use. 

Jump ahead to 2008/09 I began making floats again and Northwoods was born.  I sold some through local tackle shops with little success.  The floats I made at this time had a loafer/chubber type body with a carbon fiber stem.  These floats were the best I had ever made.  Each one was nearly uniform in size, shape, and they tracked true through the drift.  Sometime later my belt broke and the dead centers worn out I had to call it quits for the time being.   Now, fast forwarding to 2012...  I got one of those elcheapo harbor freight wood lathes (the small one) bought some more balsa and began turning more floats.  This lathe is by far the best tool I have had for making floats.  I regret not buying one a long time ago.  Each float is now perfectly round and naturally the best I have ever made.

So, for the time being I will be using this page as a place you can purchase my floats.  I will begin posting pictures of the floats for you to see.   All the floats are handmade with either carbonfiber stems or wire stems. 

Thank you, 

Randy Gerrick

email: northwoodscustomfloats@gmail.com