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Altoids and Sucrets what are you talking about
i remember going fishing with my grandfather in the early 80's. he would bring hooks sinkers and a spool of 15lb. shakespere line and 2 handlines with some frozen fish to start out. we'ed sit on buckets and jig up smelts on our hand lines to use as bait then he would walk to shore with his ax and cut a half dozen 6 ft. alders. wed' drill the holes and pile the slush near the hole. then we would push a alder into it, centering the tip over the hole. hed strip about 20 yrds of line tying one end at the base of the alder and tying a hook and sinker on. hed then slightly split the tip of the alder. once hook was baited, he would find his depth then nock the line in the split and coil the extra near the hole. the fish would grab the bait and pull the line thru the notch untill it hit the end, setting the hook. you would see the whippy alder bouncing up and down when the fish was on! man we caught alot of fish this way. i even did it with my kids. they loved making their own traps. we rarely missed a fish with this setup. said he learned it from a old indian when he was a kid. landed some 6-7lb lakers and salmon on these. try it sometime. its fun!
Anyone dropping extra money on a custom rod/reel has bigger issues all together!
Looking at and reading some of the articles/stuff out there now......hi-density Tungsten jigs that sink faster...titanium hooks...precision machined cut gears and graphite reel bodies......and on and on. Sheesh! I'm just going FISHING, and I'm sure my jigs sink fast enough for me, and the stamped steel gears in my aluminum body reel work just fine. Folks get so wrapped up in this stuff, and race to get the latest "gotta haves", I think they're more focused on that than just a nice relaxing day pulling some good eaters outta that hole. I'll take that scenario anyday over the run'n gun and blasting across the ice. But, whatever works for ya. To each his own.
Now that's some fighting words. Ice fishing rods kind of started custom homemade and a lot of time it was from broken full length rods. A lot of lures were custom homemade too. Not everyone is deft enough to home make their own stuff so paying someone else for that service isn't outrageous by any means.Custom made spools for ice fishing. Using something like small projector film reels or something to that effect. Even tip ups may have used some sewing yarn spools.
+1 on thatOnce I'm set, the fishing has gotta be really dead for me to move. I'm out to catch a few fish, not run hurdles while doing the hokey pokey on the ice. 🤷♂️
NEVER do the hokey-pokey on the ice; at least not in Minnesota. You'll attract all those Norwegian beer-barrel polka dudes.
But..... That's what it's all ABOUT!!!!
The reason fishing is so awesome is that we get to do what makes us happy.I'm like you, I like to set up on good structure and try to bring the fish in. I have friends that drill 40+ holes a day and chase all over the lake. I huck bait in the summer while friends are chucking fluff. There are so many variables that we get to chose. We get to do our own thing, together.Compare that to, for example, golf. Everybody has to dress right, have the proper 'tools', all walk in the same direction, start and stop at prescribed times, etc. Lots of people love the game, but it isn't for me.
I got into ice fishing in the mid 80's as well, and although I fished and hunted with my Dad, he was never really into ice fishing, but did have a Mora auger, a few of those dowels with picks at the end, and Laker tipups. I remember the first time we went out, I drilled a hole and it got stuck after it broke through the bottom, so I turned it the opposite direction, well that just unscrewed the auger from the shaft, and down it went. Then I started fishing with his Uncle who would put a permanent house out on White Bear Lake (MN). He targeted northerns, so we'd sit in it during the morning fish, he'd go home for a nap around Noon, then come back around 2pm. He smoked a pipe and the smell was embedded throughout the interior - I loved that smell, I almost wish someone could smoke his tobacco brand in my house, which is probably a good pest deterrent too. He had a homemade rattle wheel, which I copied when I made my own house, back when nobody made them, and he had an old Pfluegger baitcasting reel on a corked butt end of an old fiberglass rod, that also hung from the ceiling. A few years after he passed away, my parents told me his wife finally got rid of his two fish houses, which she pretty much gave away, because nobody in the immediate family wanted them. I was heartbroken and miffed, because nobody ever told me they were available - I was the only one who ever ice fished with him in his later years. The one we fished out of, was only 4'x8' and could've easily fit on my flatbed trailer, that he always loaded and unloaded by himself. I did have my own permy at the time, and pretty much layed out like his, but it was heavier and unpainted on the outside. It never came with me when I moved to WI and my Dad scrapped it. Well fast forward two decades and a few portable shanty's later, I had been himming and hawing about building another small permy. My dilemma, I'm single, no kids, and most of my ice fishing buds still live in the greater metro area, so whatever I built needed to be relatively easy to load/unload by myself, but yet not such a PITA that I would rarely use it or travel great distances with it. Well, thanks to Ice Castle, they have the Little Jigger, which has a floor plan almost identical to my Great Uncle's shanty, and the one I previously owned, by having a bench/sofa on one side and holes on the other. Plus, I have the modern conveniences that makes it enjoyable to spend a couple/few days on the water and is a breeze to load/unload, which allows me to be somewhat mobile and not tied down to one spot. I welcome new technology and innovation - I can watch my underwater camera on the big screen instead of staring at a wall or dancing bobber as a big minnow moves about on his leash, while listening to tunes on the radio, without the need of a boombox. Plus, at night I can watch back-to-back episodes of Ghost Whisperer w/Jennifer Love Hewitt on 'Antenna-Vision', which last year aired Friday nights on one of the extended ABC channels, I think.
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Topic: When Ice Fishing was a $4 dollar jigging rod from K-Mart and a pickle bucket (Read 6800 times)
