How to Use a Standard Wooden Tip-up
- 1
Open up the "arms" to form an "X."
Open the tip-up up. There are many variations of the standard wooden tip-up, but they all have to be opened up to be used. "Opening up" means unfolding the item so that the wooden "arms" can hold the tip-up over a hole drilled into the ice. Some wooden tip-ups have two wooden pieces that unfold into an "X" shape, while the reel and flag are on a perpendicular wooden piece. Open up your tip-up and lock it into place with the wingnuts on the sides. Make sure they are snug so the tip-up will not collapse and possibly fall into the hole. - 2). With the tip-up open and the arms locked into place, pull some line from the reel and attach a shiner to the hook. Be careful that the line doesn't come spinning off the reel with the weight of the shiner now pulling it down.
- 3). Take the flag and pull it all the way up the vertical shaft. Then bend it over and hook it to the trip mechanism. Make certain you have hooked the flag arm (which is made up of a strip of metal) on the correct side of the trip. The trip mechanism runs the length of the wooden tip-up. When the reel starts to spin as a fish takes line out, it will trip the mechanism, causing the flag to go up. If you set the flag on the wrong side of the trip, it will fail to set off the flag.
- 4). Make sure the flag does not go off as you set the wooden tip-up above the hole, allowing the reel arm to submerge into the water with the hook and shiner. You do not want to get slapped in the face by this flag and metal strip as it goes off, especially on a cold day!
- 5). If it is windy out, you need to turn the tip-up so the trip mechanism is facing into the breeze. Otherwise, the flag will be blown off the trip by the wind and go up without a fish having taken the bait.
- 6). When a flag goes up, it means a fish has taken the shiner. Get to the tip-up in short order and look at the line. if the reel is spinning, you have a fish on. Take the tip-up out of the hole by one of the arms and place it down gently, away from the hole so that you don't fall over it. Then grab the line and give it a hard yank in an attempt to set the hook in the mouth of the fish. If you feel the fish on, you have to pull the line in by hand until he comes out of the hole.
