David Blais, I agree with you 75 is steep, I am trying to get it reduced to a more affordable price. The circuit board is whats killing me on the price, very expensive, so that is my first targeted area to reconfigure to see if I can get the price of the board knocked down. the PCB is made in Wisconsin and not in China so there is a cost jump there by keeping it in the US.
Thx
Jerry

Pailofperch, that is a good idea, get me the address info and I would gladly send Joe Scegura one.

PikeFishman, thank you for the welcome. some criticism is not always a bad thing as it can sometimes help you make the product better. I first started testing this on the ice about 4 years ago and as with prototypes you find oopses each time, bring it back and try to fix it. The first time I had other ice fisherman test it was 2016 ice season during the burbot bash at Flaming George, WY. I gave away 12 units to three four person teams that were on the ice a lot to try them out and keep, and in return give me feed back on whether they liked it or not and how to improve it or not. Two of the teams we gave units too won 1st and 2nd at the derby. They told me they were pretty skeptical at first but in the end they said they had fun using the strike-n-light tip-ups. They liked that they could see and hear a strike from over 100′ away and to be able to reel the fish up on a tip-up instead of hand lining it.
Now to their critiquing part; what they wanted to see a change in was a louder horn, brighter lighted flags, not as much night light at the flag base and a way to tip the unit in free spool. It kind of hurt as I thought I had it spot on, when apparently it was not. So during last season I updated it to their requests and will give them another unit to critique again for this season.

Thanks again for the welcome.
Jerry

Hi, this is Jerry, I will chime in for my wife, for the record Diana does know that poly carbonate is plastic, when she typed it out she left out the word cheap in front of plastic (pc is not plastic) she meant to type in pc is not cheap plastic. it was an error but she was not trying to be dishonest. pc is expensive plastic but is very tough even in cold temps, that is why we use it. ABS was another possibility but in negative temps the pc performed better.

In answers to the questions posted here.
all great questions by the way.

how do you keep the hole from freezing over? I don’t, we just make rounds every 20 minutes or so to clean out holes, gives us something to do on the ice in between bites. it’s not for everyone it’s just what we do.

how do you keep the line from freezing after the first fish?
It has actually not been a problem for the most part. We did see some freezing line spools at -10, but we found we just spool off a few feet of line after it flash freezes, reel it back up and its ready to go. we use braided line for the most of the setups.

why is the rod so short? I get this question a lot, there is no rod, it is a tip-up with a reel holder. I have been using something like this for the last 40 plus years, a fishing reel attached to homemade cross wood dowel tip-ups. The reel just allows quick change of line or reel size on the tip-up, quick retrieval of the fish or line especially when fishing deep water. Yes, it is a challenge on larger fish without the leverage of a rod but it has become a fun challenge, reel against fish.

Is it over engineered? probably yes, it has been a long learning experience, trying to build this unit to make it durable on the ice and keep it in an affordable price range, the price being the biggest challenge, I am working on getting the price point down. Most of the parts are made here in the states, and because we can only order small quantities of material the parts places charge me double, they said that’s just the way it is and they seem to be correct on that point.

So yes, it’s a another tip-up, but with some bells and whistles on it. for us it has eliminated the need to shine a flashlight out at the tip-ups in the dark to see if a flag is up. At a quick glance you can see all of the units glowing on the ice at night and see or hear if a flag is up. I am not trying to pry people away from what they like to use, it’s just another offering in the line up in the tip-up world.

However, it does not prevent people from running over them day or night with four wheelers or snow machines, that will still happen.(three times so far).

I just like putting fish on the deck and wanted help others do the same.
sorry for the long post
Jerry

Craig Sery: You are correct. Polycarbonate is a type of plastic. Most people think of plastic as cheap and easily broken and I didn’t want anyone to get the wrong impression of our tip ups. But you are absolutely right. Polycarbonate is a type of plastic. Also, my sincere apologies if I have done something wrong here. My intention was to simply get the word out about something new. I truly did not intend to offend. I will no longer post. Again, my sincere apologies.

Craig Sery: Thanks for visiting fisholy.com. We really appreciate it! For what its worth these are not plastic, they are poly carbonate (just fyi). These tip ups are tough and have withstood all of our tests in extreme conditions. I can appreciate that you’re not interested due to the lack of a rod. It is pretty different to not have the leverage that a longer rod provides. We’re just over joyed that you took the time to take a look. Thanks again for the post.