Tip-up Northern Tactics

[thedeadsea]

Next question - how deep do you run the rig when tip-up fishing? Near the bottom? A couple feet down? Halfway? Depends on conditions? I'm new to this, so bear with me

Experiment in the colum until you find out what is working best for that lake/day. A good reason to take one or more buddies with. 3-4' below the ice seems to work well for me.

Steve

[Steve Foss]

I'm almost always running my pike tip-ups in 10 FOW or less. I run one a foot off the bottom and one half way down the water column if I'm there by myself. If I have company, we'll also run one right under the ice.

I've never been able to find a solid pattern from day to day on which part of the water column will trigger the most flags.

And it's odd that, no matter how you work them out, it seems that one tip-up does the lion's share of the work whether there are 2 our there or 12. Even seems to stay that way when baits, setups and depths are duplicated around the "hot" tip-up.

Some mysteries are not meant to be solved.

[fishinfey8]

For dead bait use smelt...if it's still legal that is??? A frozen smelt or cisco will get the pike every time!!

Last year I learned that you can't fish too shallow for pike on a tip up. Over christmas last yr. my little cousins all came and we set up tip ups in front of the house in 5-1 fow. The tip up in one foot was the hot one, no joke! I have seen this multiple times. Another time I drilled a hole and a bunch of mud/weed/junk came up with the auguer. It was not even two feet deep and that again was the hot hole...

[Steve Foss]

Good point. Until a couple years ago my biggest tip-up pike were a pair of 14-lb fat girls caught from the same hole in March in N.D. with two feet of water under the ice.

[leakywaders]

Are the dead smelt/ciscoes available commercially? I'd like to find a decent dead bait that I can buy in a store. The only thing I've seen in my local bait shop are smaller 2 to 3 inch minnows.

[Steve Foss]

You can often find frozen smelt in the fish/meat section of your grocery store. Otherwise call around to local bait stores in the area to see if you can find smelt, herring, or cisco.

[leakywaders]

Thanks, Mr. Foss, for the tips!

This board is a great resource. Just found it a few days ago!

leakywaders (aka Brian Stewart)

[erickol]

Leakywaders

I'm sure if cisco are not available, a couple of 12" browns or stocker bows would fit the bill.

or not

I had the fortune of catching lots and lots of decent chubs and stocking up, a couple of dozen of which are in my freezer. Plenty I kept to tip jigs with, but the bigger ones should work great for tip ups, now knowing dead bait works well.

[leakywaders]

Yeah, Hay Creek is full of tip-up sized brownies

Good call on the chubs. Just around ice out a guy can find boatload of dead and dying shad all over on the Mississippi. Maybe have to collect some of them for next season. Might have to fight off a few bald eagles for 'em, though...

Brian

[fishinfey8]

just fyi there is a law that prohibits catching bait in a body of water and using them in a different body of water. be careful to look up the regs on this before catching your tip-up bait. i'm sure someone will chime in with the regs but i just wanted to give a heads up!

[monster musky]

I just bought some 18# sevenstrand uncoated wire and I'm trying to make leaders like Steve Foss but I'm having trouble finishing the wrap. It seems like my leaders just keep unwinding, how do you guys get the wrap to stay?