Daredevils with tip ups???

[Cooter]

My bud outfished the group over the weekend using buckshot spoons as a weight/attractor - he also had beads and spinners on his leader, ended up being quite the flashy rig.

Can someone please quickly paraphrase the need for a blade to be legal rule?

[HandySpence]

You will need any size blade, either the size of a dare devil or as small as you can find, attached within 3" of a treble hook to make it a "Lure". Using a regular treble hook on your line is like using 3 single hooks which is illegal. Another thing I just noticed is that it is illegal to use a plain treble hook in Minnesota, Wisconsin may be different.

[Comit 2]

Quote:

the dnr says to put a small blade on trebles so that one can use trebs with live bait? even tho it is not used as a lure?

The law is there to stop people from snagging fish and I think that would be hard to do with a tip up.

[Gordie]

We are all together in our fishing addiction/codependency. Just call me the Fishing Enabler.

My wife now can blame you Steve

Oh and dont forget your stick on the ice.

Were all in this together

[Steve Foss]

And for those using spinner blades to make their trebles/quickstrikes legal, I've found the soft plastic blades, like those found on many store-bought rigs and many home-made ones (most often the home-made ones use the leftover soft blade that comes with Swedish Pimples) don't last very long. That type of soft plastic is in the one pictured above.

Problem is, over time, as things get cold and you fight fish, those blades break loose. I've had it happen to me many times. You pull up a fish and there's no darn blade there. If a C.O. walks up just then, you are SOL.

What I have done these last few years, when I want to use a treble (which I still do now and then), is buy the very smallest metal blades I can find, which only cost pennies apiece and can be found in the bulk bins of most larger tackle stores. They are the same size as the Swedish Pimple blades. Coupla bucks buys enough to last several years.

Here's an example of a treble rig that's still on one of my tip-ups. As you can readily imagine, using a single hook would make it simpler still.

[Cooter]

Have you found a difference between keeping the bead/blade above the hook or sliding them down over the wraps to the hook eye?

Another option to get beads/blades is to buy the snelled rigs that Eagle Claw makes. My local Wally World carries them. They come with tiny clevises which allow the blade to hang straighter down - don't know if it makes a difference or not. They usually come with chart/green/and orange blades. Disassemble them and save the gold hooks for springtime pannies. Not as cheap but as bulk but still very reasonable.

[wahoo]

I agree that tiny trebles, with small blade with 3 inches seems to result in less deeply hooked fish. (there was an article a few years ago in IN Fisherman about this.) I fish a few weeks in the Brainerd area every year through the ice and use live suckers or shiners. Since i get to the house around 5 am and don't leave until around 6-7 Pm I have a lot of time to try things. In that area, the live bait has outfished smelt--just my experience.

i am curious about the use of circle hooks as I haven't tried it in freshwater. I use them tuna fishing, but tuna grabbing live bait take off very quickly and you just reel with no hook set and they hook themselves. (If you jerk back like you would on a "J" hook it usually doesn't catch.) Typically NP on live bait grab it and just swim off, not real quickly--is that enough for the circle to catch in the corner of the mouth.

I'd be interested in hearing from you guys who have tried circles.

thanks,

wahoo