Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ice Fishing - Traps: What’s your brand?

I ride the fence between Heritage & Jacks but only own Jacks Traps.

What are you using? What is popular in your area?

Pints.

Beaver Dams are the #1 by a wide margin locally. Frabil thermals (or copies) likely #2.

Anymore I use Sullivan Tip Downs if I want to set lines out there.

We call them tip ups. I have a few, but mostly use JawJackers these days.

Never heard them called traps, but it sounds like tip ups are what you're meaning. I picked up a few cheap ones at Cabela's to have out while I'm spearing. I think I'll invest in new decoys before I get more tip ups though. I just got the cheapest they had, they're all pretty much made the same. I miss the old wood ones but they are 3-4x the cost. No thanks

I’m still using a set of 40 ups that I bought in 1984. Also have a set of Heritage and my sons are embarrassed by what I use so they been getting me a Jack Trap every year.

I fish between 45 and 60 days on the ice and will say that the Jack Traps are my least favorite.

I have a high-priced Beaver Dam brand , we've had the best luck with a willow twig set in the shaved ice from the ice hole just wrap the line around the end of the twig.

Being from far North Louisiana, I had to use google to find out what you are referring to. Those things are expensive! Do you ice fish in deep or shallow water...... near the top or on bottom?

All of the above depending on species.

I still have some of these tip-ups from the 60's. They will last just about forever until they freeze into slush. Chiseling them out is usually hard on them. We used to leave them overnight for Northerns.

Here in VT folks use Trap/Tip up interchangeably. I’ll have to look into the other brands mentioned.

A person can fish any water depth wanted but I generally fish in 20-25 feet. It can be hard to get the line in the hole if your smelt/sucker isn’t a good swimmer. Adding a split shot can help but some say it adds to underwater tangles. The flag pops up when the little reel spins and releases the flag indicating a strike. Sometimes the wind can release the flag which stinks.

I like the Jack Trap because they pretty much eliminate wind flags.

Pretty fun way to spend a few hours outdoors to beat the Winter doldrums.

I have a bucket full of old wooden ones from the 70's. They are similar to an Arctic or Beaver Dam but the difference is they have a large red blade that holds the flag down. When the fish takes line you can see it turning from quite a ways away. I believe they were called a "Muskie Bill Fish Slayer".

I've ice fished in depths from 2 to 110 feet. All depends on the lake and species you're going after.

I Like Heritage. Haven't used anything else for probably 20 years. I like the larger spools when fishing for trout in deeper waters.

We use a short ice fishing spinning rod with spinning reel sitting across the open end of a 5gal bbl with the tip positioned over the hole.

Tried lots of different options.

This is all we use now - HT Enterprises, wind jigger.





The angle is adjustable, at the base.