December 13, 2021
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Like many hardwater panfish anglers, I completely get pleasure from having my favourite jigging rod in hand whereas the flasher unit reveals a big purple mark rising as much as my lure. Nonetheless, there are days when making an attempt your entire greatest jigs and breaking out even your most dangerous jigging cadence can nonetheless result in a irritating day on the ice. When fish are fussy, tip downs can typically save the day.
Hanging In The Steadiness
Tip downs have develop into an more and more in style addition to many ice anglers’ tools checklist. I’ve heard folks describe all kinds of ice fishing gadgets as tip downs. For the needs of this text, I’ll outline a tip down as an ice fishing gadget that makes use of a fastidiously balanced rod on some kind of stand so there’s virtually no resistance felt by the fish when it initially takes the bait.
Tip downs such because the Certain Strike and Modern Tip Down fashions have small, light-weight rods with fundamental plastic reels. The reels are meant for line storage, not for reeling in a fish. Such tip downs usually depend on the hook being set with the rod, however the line is retrieved utilizing the identical fundamental hand-over-hand retrieval approach as conventional tip ups. Each of those tip downs might be set as much as enable line to free spool after the rod is absolutely tipped down. For that reason, it’s essential to momentarily lock the reel by inserting your thumb in opposition to the reel while you set the hook.
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Sullivan Tip Downs make the most of a novel sliding rod holder that enables a rod with a spinning reel to behave like a balanced tip down for probably the most half. With out the power to slip, many different gadgets that try and stability a rod with a spinning reel should not as efficient as a real balanced tip down. The difficulty is considered one of weight and geometry. If a rod with a spinning wheel is balanced, as quickly because the rod tip begins to maneuver downward, the burden of the spinning reel strikes behind the pivot level and begins to create resistance for the fish trying to take the bait. In my expertise a devoted tip down with a well-balanced rod or the Sullivan sliding design is more practical at catching mild biting panfish.
Tip Downs To The Rescue
This previous winter my spouse, brother-in-law and I hit the arduous water on a lake within the Eagle River, Wisconsin space the place, a number of years prior, my brother-in-law had an exceptionally good day of crappie fishing.
As I usually do, as soon as we reached our spot, I drilled a few dozen holes, I fired up my flasher unit and commenced working a tungsten jig tipped with a waxworm with my favourite ice rod. We had been in 22 toes of water and I used to be persistently marking fish that will strategy the jig however nothing I attempted may coerce the fish to chew.>
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My spouse and her brother methodically went about setting-up an expansion of six Modern tip downs in a line that began about 10 toes from my jigging location. By the point that they had began establishing the third and fourth tip downs, the primary two had been starting to tip downward as crappies lazily ate the small minnows hooked on No. 14 treble hooks suspended from the tip-down line.
After my spouse and brother-in-law had iced a half dozen good eater crappies within the span of about 20 minutes, I retired my jigging pole, turned off the flasher and commenced to assist them sustain with the tip-down motion. My spouse prefers to fish with tip-downs and I’d fairly not admit what number of days every winter that she out fishes me after we are focusing on panfish, but I stubbornly persist with my most popular jigging and flasher approach. Even after I put a minnow on my jigging rod or strive useless sticking a minnow, the dearth of jigging motion and “no-resistance” chew allowed by a tip down typically causes them to outperform my ice rod and spinning reel minnow displays—particularly when fish should not aggressive.
Whereas tip downs have gotten growing in style in lots of areas of the ice belt, I stay in north central Wisconsin, and this area appears to be the epicenter for the expansion in reputation of those easy, but environment friendly, gadgets. On any given Saturday or Sunday throughout ice season, it will be a secure wager that on a well-liked lake we fish recurrently, of the a whole lot of traces being fished on this lake, over two-thirds of the traces being moist are utilizing tip downs. Almost all are utilizing stay minnows for bait and focusing on primarily crappies.
Tip downs are additionally equally efficient on perch. By utilizing a single hook and a waxworm, tip downs will also be efficient on light-biting bluegills. With heavier line, it’s potential to take walleye and northern pike with tip downs as effectively, however one must be cautious to not enable these bigger fish to tug your entire rod into the outlet. Bigger minnows could require extra weight to be added to the rod deal with. Between their barely larger weight and stronger swimming motion, bigger minnows will continuously have the ability to pull down fastidiously balanced tip down except extra counterbalance weight is added.
All the time Tinkering
Over the previous 10 years of utilizing tip downs, I’ve tried a wide range of totally different setups. Like most tinkering makes an attempt, some issues work effectively and others are chalked up as “studying experiences.”
I began out shopping for six of the Certain-Strike model tip downs manufactured just some miles from my residence. These tip downs use a easy oak collapsible stand and a reasonably typical “old skool” jigging rod with a horizontally positioned open spool plastic reel on high of the rod. These tip downs are efficient and sturdy and are by far the most well-liked kind of tip down I see on the lakes that I fish.
One of many first adjustments we made to the tip downs was to change the monofilament line to 30-pound Dacron with a 3-foot chief of monofilament. The rationale I switched to the heavy line was to enhance line administration on the ice when hand lining in a fish and rapidly laying line onto the ice. In contrast to light-weight monofilament line, the heavy-duty foremost line didn’t tangle very simply on windy days, and it snagged (or broke) considerably much less typically on the small ice shards that inevitably develop into frozen to the ice close to drilled fishing holes. The principle disadvantage of the heavy-duty foremost line was that it was extra vulnerable to freezing in place when the outlet started to skim over in under freezing temperatures.
Maybe the most important secret to success of a tip down is the close to complete lack of resistance {that a} fish feels because the tip down pole slowly pivots down towards the ice because the fish takes the bait. This key benefit is eradicated if the road freezes within the gap and creates resistance because the fish tries to take the bait. To treatment this challenge, we started inserting a small AA battery powered aerator on every tip down base and positioned the diffuser stone within the fishing gap. The bubbles generated did an efficient job of stopping the outlet from freezing over. On brutally chilly days, the mixture of a foam gap cowl and an aerator can go a good distance towards stopping the outlet from skimming over and freezing your line in place.
We have now additionally efficiently used Ice Stopper bobbers which immerse monofilament line in a non-toxic answer that forestalls the road from freezing and permits the tip down to stay delicate and work correctly even when the water within the fishing gap skims over with ice.
To maintain it easy, the holes might be continuously cleaned out to take away skim ice however on brutally chilly days it may be troublesome to maintain up with Mom Nature’s need to show the water on the high of the outlet into a brand new sheet of ice.
About two years in the past, we started utilizing a more moderen tube-style tip down known as the Modern Tip Down. These tube-style tip downs comprise your entire rod/reel and leg assemblies contained in the hole tube that capabilities because the stand for the tip down. Ease of packing is a serious benefit of the Modern tip down when in comparison with the extra conventional tip downs that make the most of a folding wood base. The tubular base is telescopic to permit the tip all the way down to be set at totally different heights relying on wind circumstances. When packaged up for journey, your entire tip down is contained in a fairly sturdy plastic tube roughly 2 1/2-inch in diameter and 30 inches lengthy. They don’t take up a lot room even in one-person, flip-over-style shelters.
My present set-up makes use of Modern tip downs spooled with 4- or 6-pound monofilament, No. 12 or No. 14 treble hooks and simply the correct amount of split-shot weight 8 inches above the hook to attain close to excellent stability of the tip down pole. An added advantage of the Modern tip down is that the rod has a hole deal with with a detachable cap so cut up shot might be added contained in the deal with finish to actually positive tune the stability of the pole.
Setting Up for Success
The hook up success of a tip down is probably going doubled if the hook is ready earlier than the rod tip reaches its downward restrict. For that reason, with the ability to quickly detect a potential chew and with the ability to rapidly attain the tip all the way down to set the hook are vital elements in your total success.
There are days when the winter climate is gentle sufficient for ice anglers to stay out within the components and visually monitor an expansion of tip downs throughout day-long outings. Nonetheless, as soon as we attain mid-winter, my spouse and I’ve discovered that having the correct shelter is a crucial a part of our success. I designed and constructed a tough sided ice shack that’s optimized for tip-down fishing. The shack encompasses a single giant window (truly an previous patio door turned on its aspect). By utilizing skids, the shack sits near the ice to permit for a quick and secure exit path on the first signal of tip down beginning to transfer. Lastly the door of the everlasting shelter is spring loaded with no latch and it opens towards the window aspect of the shack the place the tip downs are positioned.
After we use this shelter, I will likely be in the long run of the shack reverse the door jigging and watching my flasher unit and my spouse is sitting within the shack subsequent to me finding out her tip downs by the big window for any indicators of rod motion. Her quickness and pleasure when she flies out of the shack door on the first signal of an energetic tip down is one thing I by no means tire of.
A few cheap LED spotlights mounted to the entrance of the ice shack are powered by a 12V jumpstart pack. The lights enable us to simply arrange within the pre-dawn darkness and fish till effectively after darkish. We added reflective tape to the information and handles of our tip down rods. Throughout low mild circumstances, the reflective materials simply reveals any motion of the rod when illuminated with these lights.
There are an awesome many different suggestions and tips I’ve discovered about tip downs through the years. As a result of the poles are fastidiously balanced, it’s usually greatest to arrange the tip downs with the rod pointing into the wind. Doing the alternative will continuously trigger the wind to tip the pole down and provides a false strike indication.
In excessive winds, it could generally be vital to make use of a softball dimension clump of slush from a freshly drilled gap on the bottom or leg of the tip down to stop it from blowing over. Make sure to not overdo it and have some kind of chisel to launch the tip down from the slush ball as soon as it freezes.
Whereas a extra randomly positioned unfold of tip downs could cowl extra space, we have now discovered that inserting the tip downs in a straight line improves chew detection as we’re primarily in a position to watch all of them on the identical time with out the necessity to continually transfer our heads and switch round to look forwards and backwards by a extensively unfold group of tip downs. Usually a small bob of the rod tip is the primary indication {that a} tip down goes to be hit and continuously seeing that first small bob and attending to the tip down rapidly is the distinction between touchdown the fish or having one other failed hook set.
If you’re a high-tech angler, you may rig Blue Tipz gadgets made by Deep Freeze onto your tip down rod and, utilizing Bluetooth, have your cellphone sound an alarm when your tip down is hit.
When it comes to social enjoyable when ice fishing, it’s robust to beat the sometimes-frantic motion of being out within the components with family and friends on a pleasant winter day within the midst of bunch of energetic tip downs.
Like many different points of our lives, ice fishing has gotten more and more refined. Superior scanning sonar, finely tuned flasher items, automated hook setting gadgets in addition to high-end rods and reels are simply a number of the methods expertise has complimented our pastime. There’s something refreshing concerning the simplicity of a fundamental rod on a pivot and hand-lining your fish topside.
In case you’ve used tip downs prior to now, improve your success by persevering with to positive tune your tip down techniques. When you have hardly ever or by no means used tip downs, give them a strive—you’ll probably be shocked how these easy gadgets can improve your success on the ice this winter.
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