I read this question every year, and always find differences in definitions of what exactly "tip ups" are and what "tip downs" are. Here in NY, when we ice fish lake erie, we use "lake erie tip ups" for the light biting perch. They use a 2oz spreader and we fish with live emerald shiners. The setup also works tremendously for crappie. SO that has always been my definition of a tip up; but I think more people are familiar with the term "rockers". The link in the previous post showing what tip downs are also have a few pictures of lake erie tip ups. Here's one of us using ours.
Anyways, "tip ups" I assume are the flags - similar to what guys use for pikes only a bit more senstive for calico? And tip downs are the poles that suspend horizontally above the hole, and get yanked downwards when the crappie hit right?
Either way, those techniques require the fish to swallow it, and it takes a long time to react to it as you run all over the ice after various flags and tipdowns. I've seen the old rockers out fish tip downs per man every time. A lot of guys just don't have the patience; it's far easier to look across a vast field of poles at a flag popping up or a pole tipping down than to have two rockers, side by side. With the rockers, you can detect tiny nibbles and encourage the bite - as opposed to only reacting to a crappie/perch that has to inhale and run with the bait. The rockers, or lake erie tip ups we have, have a dowel that intersects the main pole. This dowel rests on two blocks, that each have a hacksaw blade imbedded into it to make friction b/w the dowel and the block minimum. The result? An ultra sensitive but yet hardy pole that can get down to the depths quickly.
A group of 5 of us went out on erie a few years back; me and my dad got 25-30 with each of us using two lake erie tip ups. The other three guys who came with us had a vast array of maybe 12-15 tip downs spread across a wide area. They ended up with the 20-25 as well - but they had far more poles and one extra guy between them. So we average 13-15 perch per person, and they were closer to 7-10. Not a huge difference; I know. But on a day where the perch really come through, tip downs can turn into a field of chaos and missed oppurtunities (and injuries from slipping all over the ice!). Lake erie tip ups, being right in front of you, enable you to really have a handle on a big school of perch coming through. And on the contrary, if its a finicky day - tip downs may be more appealing to use because they are not as "boring" per se, but Lake erie tip ups let you encourage nibbles into full on bites and give you more control to nail those "fringe" fish.
