I wish I could say it has been all good, but I’m not even sure it has been mostly good. Wheel houses I definitely enjoy for what they are. I’m not old enough to remember a time when there wasn’t a city on most lakes, although when I was a kid it was mostly skid/homemade shacks. Now they are mostly drop down wheel houses. It’s rare to see a home built hard side house (excluding home built on a wheelhouse frame of course.
I can think of ways to make portables better, but cost is always a factor. When I was a kid, it was mostly suitcase or folding houses. For a long time it seemed to be flip overs were what the cool kids ran. Now it seems we almost went full circle. The old fold ups seem to be replaced with hubs, and suitcases have made a comeback. I personally love a Canvas Craft suitcase, and still use one. Maybe long ago someone made one, but I think you could improve on the design by making the floor from aluminum, but I never got around to building one.
ATV/Snowmobiles are definitely a huge asset, however, I’m not sure I’d consider them a recent development. I know my dad talks about taking the snowmobile all over back in the 60’s. I do appreciate some of the advancements, but I’ve ran 70’s sleds, and there’s no reason they can’t be just as good ice machines as a 2021 sled. Maybe even better, as they were all air cooled back then, now you can’t hardly find a fan cooled.
Rod’s and Reel’s. Yep, 100%. We used to use what we called jiggle sticks. Basically a stick with an eye on the tip, and a couple wood screws to hold some fishing line. Why they were popular, I’ll never know. I ended up simply fishing with the line in my hands. Maybe with a bobber they made more sense. Then they started making them with a semi-flexible fiberglass or stainless steel rod on them. I say semi-flexible because they were beyond what we could call extra-heavy now. You could actually feel bites with these, and they did work. I’d never go back to them instead of a modern fiberglass or graphite rod. I will say my steel Emmrod is ok too for what it is.
Reels are a whole different matter. The jiggle sticks were nothing but screws you wrapped line around. Then they went to metal or plastic spools, which did the job in a rather convenient way. Jumping WAY ahead to when “straight line” reels became a short lived fad a few years back, they were nothing but an incarnation of these old spools mixed with a fly reel. I don’t know exactly when spinning reels came to be, but they are easily one of the biggest advancements in ice fishing ever. It’s hard to imagine a time where we did not have reliable, smooth reels, that also had drags. Now I see more bait casters showing up on ice rods, but they never became as popular for some reason. The big one for me was the drag. It used to be you had to pay big money, otherwise most reels had a drag that was only slightly better than your fingers. Reeling backwards was a common technique. Eventually decent drags found their way into cheap reels.
Electronics sure, flashers have come a long ways. I started with an old green box, and it did kind of work. You didn’t see solid bars like you do now, you would see flashes because they were simply not as strong as they are now. They didn’t work good in deep water, but did the job under 20′ deep if you really learned them. Vexilar definitely changed the game. I still use an FL-8. Suddenly fish were a solid mark on the screen, you could see a fish separate from the bottom (before you MIGHT see the bottom flicker when a fish was down there), and they would clearly see fish in even very deep water. They have advanced since then with multi angle transducers, better hardware, and better screens. Those FL-28’s are practically silent, you can see them way easier in the sun, and are crazy precise. You can see individual weights on your line, although I’m not convinced that is an advantage to fishing, it is cool. For pan fishing, it’s hard to imagine fishing without a flasher anymore. Walleye too. For pike fishing, you can definitely get away without one, although they do make getting your depth right far easier, whether its tip ups or jigging. For pike fishing, I definitely like underwater cameras. Being able to see what is around a hole as far as rocks, weeds, or whatever are a far bigger advantage to me than what a flasher can do. Old school pike fishing meant you pull your coat over your head to look down the hole. I still do it, but a camera lets you see far more. It is a ton of fun watching them smash baits too.
Augers, yeah, they have came a long ways. Not long ago I found a spoon in my grandpas shed. I couldn’t even imagine trying to drill a hole with a sharpened spoon auger. There was a time I was so poor I couldnt buy an auger, so fished early season with nothing but a spud bar which I cut holes with. By the time ice got over 8″, it wasn’t much fun at all. As a kid, I remember cutting holes with an axe more than once. I sure do love a sharp auger though. Gas augers have been around forever, and not much has changed to the engines. The older augers seem to be geared much faster, you could really burn holes with them, but they were heavy iron tanks, and sprayed ice and water everywhere. Then came better auger designs, and lower gearing. Now you hardly think about you new auger which piles shavings in a neat cone at the hole, barley any water, as it chews through 12″+ of ice in seconds. My Eskimo probably goes through 2″ of ice per second. The Strikemaster lazer’s even faster, although they go from sharp to dull with hardly any warning, and when they dull, well, good luck. I tried to get on the electric auger bandwagon, but I’m not impressed. As a kid, dad got an old strikemaster that you hooked to a car battery. It cut holes, but it wasn’t that good. The new ION’s and similar are ok, but still not that great to me. It seems wheel house guys appreciate them a lot more. Dad uses a drill adapter, and his Milwaukee drill with a Mora hand drill is an animal. It is faster than the Ion, and he already had the drill. Instead I think the real advancement has been lithium Ion batteries. Before, cordless anything sucked. Drills were weak, and batteries always dead. Now you can leave a Milwaukee M18 in your truck for weeks in the winter, and it will still work as good as they day you put it in there. 0 degrees, no problem, they still drill. Batteries are kind of expensive, but two of them gets you a long ways. All that said, I went back to a hand auger when I’m not using my gas. I’ve got no problem burning 30-40 holes by hand through thin to moderate ice with my 7″ Mora. If it’s thicker ice, I take the snowmobile and gas auger. A dirt cheap Mora hand auger is a thing of beauty. They weigh nothing, work in any conditions, and cut like mad.
Footwear, I’m going to say we have gone downhill. You can still get as good, possibly better boots, but they are crazy expensive. When I was a kid, you could go to the local bait shop and buy a set of made in USA boot, I think La Crosse made some really good ones and they did not cost an arm and a leg. They didn’t have any of the fancy jargon. They were rubber foot, with a leather upper. You put sno seal on them, and they were waterproof enough, the liners were great, they breathed, I prefer the feel of leather and laces, to todays slip on boots. For a while La Crosse made some crazy ice boots, I think called ice kings. They had the thickest insulation of any boot I’ve ever seen before or since. I don’t care what anyone says, nobody has ever made a warmer boot to this day. They weren’t great for everything, not even ice fishing, but if you wanted a boot to put on in a deer stand for a 12+ hour sit below freezing, they could not be beat. They do not make a boot like that anymore. I wear a size 15 myself, sometimes 16 depending on the toe box. It never was easy to find large boots, but most companies made them. Now it seems everyone stops at 13, maybe 14. I’m simply not impressed with boots today, I wish we could go back to how they were.
Heaters the same thing. It wasn’t that long ago you could buy a made in USA sunflower heater that you hooked to propane and it would light instantly, and burn hot. They would last many years of regular use. Now it seems sunflowers are hit or miss, mostly miss. It seems the elements on them burn out in a year or two. Buddy heats suck. You have to modify them to make them usable, and they still aren’t very good. I’ve had my last one 3 years, had to modify the heck out of it. I pulled it out today, and spent half an hour getting the stupid thing to light. Click, click, click. Finally it lit, ran for about a minute and went out. I took it and threw it as hard as I could into the garage. It doesn’t work anymore. That’s the second big buddy which got smashed. Who on earth thinks these things are good in any metric? I’m going to buy a sunflower later, at least I know it will light.
One thing I don’t like what has happened to ice fishing is all the little plastic bits. I know we live in a plastic world now, but it seems it has been used out of proportion in ice fishing stuff. Reels, way too much plastic. Tip up frames, fine, but the spools break eventually. Tackle boxes, plastic which crack in the cold if you drop them. fish houses with a tone of plastic. I had an Eskimo EVO 2, and everything plastic on it broke, including the sled. Speaking of which, sleds are plastic, but are actually better because of it. I love my Jet sled. About the only thing better is a homemade frame, AKA Smitty, with real skis or similar on it. Flashers, specifically the cases are not as good. I have a 1990’s Vexilar Genz pack, made of a nice solid and malleable plastic. It hasn’t broke yet. A new Genz pack is made of dirt cheap and super brittle junk plastic which breaks easily. Bait coolers are a great idea, but poorly executed. I still have my Engel bait cooler, but it’s on it’s last legs. I’m going to build one from a Coleman cooler eventually, which are much better quality. I guess what I’m saying is while a lot of our gear is easier to use now, it is almost universally delicate in comparison.
