Ice fishing question

[ranger1]

I have seen and heard about a light that is battery opperated and fits on the tip-up. There is a thread or piece of line in between two contacts and when the flag goes up, the contacts connect, and the light goes on. Does anyone know where you can purchase these lights or is this a home made rig?

[Chad]

There are a couple of rigs like this at Fleet Farm, Scheels, Cabelas, Gander, etc...
They have the mercury lights that clip to the flag and turn on when the flag goes up. The light goes off in the horizantal position and goes on when verticle. They also have the remote controll devices. You wear a pager on your belt and when the flag goes up it pulls a pin which closes the circuit causing a light to go off and your pager to buzz.

[GoWyo]

You can make them too. All you need is a piece of PVC Pipe, 2 pieces of thin gauge plate, An old D-cell flashlight and some insulated wire with an alligator clip on each end. your bulb is not attached to the flag but is on top of the plate inside the old bulb assembly of the flashlight, your contact is made by cliping one end of the alligator clip to the bottom plate and the other to the flag post of a Polar Tip-up, when the flag goes up the post touches the top plate and contact is made and lights the bulb. you have to drill 2 small holes in the frame of your Polar and match them up to the bottom plate, attach with machine bolts. I attach the bottom plate to the PVC pipe with epoxy. You have to do some tight fit-up with 2 D-Cells, cut your PVC pipe the right length to make contact with the 2 plates, also the top plate has to be removable so you can change your batteries, I just epoxied a couple of nuts to the PVC pipe and drilled a couple of holes in the top plate and then ran a couple of bolts through the plate to tighten it down, I hope this is not confusing, It would be better to draw this instead, but walleye central does not have the AutoCad option yet. Come on Scott, let's get High Tech. Just kidding Scott has done wonders for the walleye community.

[ranger1]

Thanks, much, I'll have to be in touch about how to build this. Autocad would be nice!