Jack’s 10 Tip-up Tips To Get Ready!

It’s that time of year to pull your tip-ups out of storage and get ready for the coming ice fishing season! Here are Tim Jack’s top ten tips to get your tip-ups ready to land the big one this season:

#1 Inspect Your Tip-ups

– Look your tip-ups over from head to toe, making sure everything is in place and looking as it should be to ensure it will be functioning at its fullest when you get out on the ice.

#2 Repair Last Season’s Damage

– Did your tip-ups take a beating last year; hit by a snowmobile maybe? Make sure all your parts are intact and your tip-ups’ wood is solid. If you did have a mishap last year, stop by and see us in Monmouth. We have all the parts to make repairs at a fair cost.

#3 Tighten Fasteners

– Tighten all the wing nuts on the tip-ups as well as tightening the nut on the inside of your reel up snug to the washer on the tip-up’s center. This ensures that everything is tight and secure for the coming season.

#4 Tie on New Leaders

– Remove your old leader line and tie on some new mono filament with new swivels. This makes sure your terminal tackle is in top condition, with a strong, straight leader for more successful fishing.

#5 New Hooks

– Tie a new batch of hooks on your new leaders. This makes sure you have a sharp hook and don’t lose fish. We also recommend tying on a new hook every three days of fishing to ensure you aren’t fishing with a dull hook.

#6 Grease Reels

– Remove your reel from the tip-up by holding a screw driver on the end of the reel bolt and removing the lock nut from the back of the tip-up center. Apply a fresh layer of white lithium grease to the reel bolt. This ensures smooth reel function and will help keep your reels from freezing up solid when they are out of the water.

#7 Grease Trippers

– Remove the center clip on the tripper of your Jack Trap and you will find a small grease fitting. Using a grease gun with a chainsaw tip fitting; fill the tripper tube with white lithium grease while pushing out the old grease. Keep injecting until the grease coming from the tripper is white. A tripper full of white lithium grease displaces water and ice from inside the tripper and has a well lubricated inner rod. Wipe the excess grease up with a paper towel and re-install the center clip.

#8 Re-spool Line

– Remove your line from your trap and re-spool it back onto the reel. This ensures you have a tight and even spool to start the season with. Your line is often poorly spooled after the past season of fishing.

#9 Check Your Line

– Look your line over for any knots or damaged areas. This ensures that you will not have a line break while you’re pulling in your big catch. Also check to make sure your line still has a good coat of wax to help keep it from freezing. If your wax has worn out; get some new line or remove your line and re-spool it so the line that was inside the reel is now the outer layer. This helps you get more life out of your line because the line inside your reel often still has a good layer of wax.

#10 Check your Flags

– Look your flags over for any tears or damage. We often hear of mice chewing up flags while tip-ups are in storage. You don’t want to find yourself on the ice with a flag that doesn’t show up, or even worse no flag at all.

So those are the tips, hope to see you in the shop soon and don’t forget about our annual open house December 14th and 15th, as well as the specials we’ll have on Black Friday in Monmouth and Cyber Monday at www.jacktraps.com!

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This post was written by Shawn Norton