tip-down help

My two daughters are co-leaders for small a Girl Scout Troop in the heart of the Twin Cities.

There are four (city) girls in the troop about 13 years of age and my daughters are constantly looking for ways to expand their horizons.

I am retired and live on a small lake in Crow Wing Co. that has hundreds of small to mid-sized Sunfish. I love to ice fish and offered to take them ice fishing in mid-January as a winter outing. Dinner is to be the catch of the day. The girls jumped at the idea.

Now, I needed to plan for a successful outing for a group that has never been fishing.

I needed to outfit them with equipment on the ice and try to develop some vested interest in the process. There are many postings out there that talk about how young people enjoy tip-down fishing. Tip-downs are relatively inexpensive to make and between now and January the could apply their own finishing touches to develop some vested interest.

So, I looked at as many designs as I could find and made six tip-downs that the girls could finish.

I have never fish tip-downs before and was hoping that I could get some input from the experts on this site.

Any and all input is welcome.

One of the questions that pops to the top if my mind is “how much do you weight the handle to hold the tip in the air”?

I plan to fish with small crappie minnows, comments?

Thanks

If balanced properly you do not add any weight at all to the handle. The Tip Downs that we make sit roughly at the same angle as yours and the stands/frames are basically the same design.

I would of made the base of the frame go to the outside of the upright instead of inside for better stability, but other than that they look great!!

They should tip as easy as possible and once they hit horizontal they should free fall with the tip of the pole going just past the end of the frame and feeding the line into the hole.

Also put your wing nuts to the outside, it’s a lot easier to tighten them that way.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask, we have been using Tip Downs for roughly 20 years.

I don’t fish with tipdowns but have seen them in action. IceNutz would be your go to guy on this matter. Since you are going to be teaching young minds a safety tether may be a good idea.

Awesome job on the handles very nice touch. Also very impressed in what you are doing.

Almost forgot, we handline our fish, reeling them in just takes to long and you need to reset the depth each time. We use a Hi-Vis 6# mono for the main line, add a #18 small swivel, 2 to 3 ft of clear 4# fluorocarbon, a #14 Eagle Claw Treble hook and a small split shot, just enough to get the minnow down.

The Hi-Vis line makes it a lot easier to see on the ice.

Good point we add a safety line about 4 – 5 ft long that has a locking snap on the end that clips to an Eye Screw in the butt of the rod handle, the other end is tied to an eye screw in the top portion of the frame.

Pics here. I use aluminum Fence Ties for the balance rod and glue them in. It is a lot of work to make them but I enjoy doing it.

We have also added lights to them as an option for night time fishing.

http://s947.photobucket.com/user/cmherrmann/library/Tip%20downs?sort=3&page=1

I would suggest using the Schooley Reels over the HT brand, a much nice reel with a spring drag, a little more expensive but worth it. We are looking at switching to Schooley poles from the HT brand if the cost can be kept reasonable.

I do the same handlining…. except I use regular heavy tip up braided line. down to the leader. For me, it made it easier seeing and dealing with on the ice and with gloves than mono. Had a kid with that wanted to reel the fish in, so I used bobber stops up higher on the line to act as markers for depth for re-setting.

Hello fishn. I can’t help much with the tipdowns because I’ve never used them, but they look very nice!

My only comment would be the use of crappie minnows for sunfish. If the lake has a lot of sunfish/bluegills, the action might be a bit slow with minnows. The small minnows work great for crappies but unless quite large, bluegills seem to ignore them.

You might want to use a small ice jig tipped with waxies, wigglers, or some other form of larvae. If using waxies, etc you’ll want to be quick to set the hook when the rod tips!

Hope that helps. Have fun!

Tucker

Thanks for the input.

The construction input was great.

I will get some wax worms to go along with the crappie minnows when we hit the ice.

I will add pictures of the girl’s finished product and our fishing success in January.