Saturday, January 13, 2018

Tip-Ups

 The secret of fishing a river or stream is to find a bay, inlet or other deep cut in the bank with little current or fish a large, slow eddy. The weaker the current, the better the chances of success since fish metabolisms slow way down in the icy waters and fish seek out the quietest spots to lie.    
Where to fish is very similar to summer fishing: find structure. Points, drop offs, rocky humps, deeper bowls, river edges, old roads, weed edges and other fish habitat hold fish in the winter just as they did in the summer. Many fish will be deep, but immediately after ice over there will be numbers of fish in shallow waters, mainly in areas with rock, wood and green weeds. However, once the weeds are dead they begin to decay absorbing oxygen from the surrounding water. Areas outside stream mouths are also affected as leaves and other organic material washed into the lake breaks down robbing oxygen from the waters and driving the fish away.
Tip-Ups are the most widely used method of ice fishing. Tip-Ups consist of a base, strike indicator flag and line spool held underwater preventing it freezing. The base is set on the ice, the hook baited and lowered to a foot or 2 of the bottom and the flag bent over and lightly placed in a notch. When a fish takes and pulls out line the spools rotates and releases the wire flag which springs upright; pretty exciting when it happens.

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