View Full Version : Tip Up Designs
Does anyone have a good homemade tip up design they would like to share.
Larry
01-25-2001, 04:38 PM
Several years ago we made one that was a lot of fun to use. We just took two dowels about 12" long and made a cross. I stuck a small wire with a small flag in one end and put some cup hooks on it. We used 6lb line and put it through a screw eye on the other end. Your line was tied off hard. Every time a fish jerked on it the flag would come up and wave at you. It was a lot of fun when the perch and walleyes moved in. It had a lot of drawbacks though. There was no spool. If you hooked a big fish it either broke off or drug your tipup down the hole. If it was cold and they froze in, they were a bear to chop out too. I have since switched to polars. We can use six lines here. I still miss the days when the fish would move into our lines and we would 4-5 flags waving up and down. If you are mostly catching smaller fish it is an exciting way to go.
Are you familiar with umbrella stave tipups or the tipups based on them? They consist mainly of an upright and a cross arm with a sliding weight. When there is a bite the cross arm tips and the weight slides to keep the cross arm from tiping back. There is a flag on the end of the cross arm (or the end is painted). I have heavy banding incorporated into my uprights so the wind jigs the bait. Email me if you want a better discription etc.
"An angler is a man who spends rainy days sitting around on the muddy banks of rivers doing nothing because his wife won't let him do it at home." --- Irish saying