Gator

It was one of those days today...in a good way! We caught fish from the surface to 50' down, trolling mainly between 180-220 fow. Both spoons and plugs in any shade of steelhead red with a 1 oz Dive Bomb were good off the boards , no real pattern to the deeper fish, with both kings and steelies coming on NBKs, Monkey Puke, Wonderbread, the whole arsenal was firing. Riggers from 35 to 50 stacked with sliders set 12' above the ball and wire divers set 100 to 140' on a 2 1/2 setting. Lots of double and triples. The steel put on an aerial show; even a couple lakers came out to play. Here's one of our doubles...the chromer is nearly as big as the king. Good times.

I'm always late to the party... Happy birthday Chad!

Click that link in his message where it says, "www.fingerlakestackle.com". Prices range from $5.50 to $6.75 (I believe) and most of the spoons have pictures with them. Choose wisely

Pequod ate one this year and said that it was better than the perch. I gave mine to him.

This may be redundant, but temperature is the most important thing. We bought a ceramic-coated cast iron Dutch Oven from Gander a couple of months ago. It allows us to heat up enough oil that the temperature doesn't drop much when we put in some fillets. And it doesn't spatter oil everywhere. We fry the fish in small batches of 4-6 fillets at a time, which is fine since there's only three of us. The importance of temperature was driven home when I accidentally had the oil thermometer touching the bottom of the pan. The reading was 50 degrees higher than the actual temp, and the fillets were crap. Same batter, 50 degrees hotter...voila! Perfect. We've tried everything from tempura to beer batter to Panko to an egg dredge. They're all delicious and they're all crisp, cooked at 375 degrees.

I have the Eagle Claw reel, too. I guess my take on it is that it's not the best of reels for fishing deep lake trout...the drag is really touchy and the gear ratio is kind of low. When I first got mine, I noticed that the free spool wasn't spinning freely. I ended up removing the spool and I found a single piece in there that somehow wasn't inserted right when it was put together, so it was causing some odd things to happen (including random free spooling). It was a simple matter of making sure that the piece fit into the spool correctly when I re-tighten'd the thing. I agree with the post above that it could have been your bumping the star drag, too. If you set the drag light, a little touch will have you in free spool...it's not got much on the low end dynamic range. Our typical set up for lakers in Keuka is ten lb PowerPro, six feet of 6 lb test fluorocarbon leader and a baitcasting reel to avoid line twist. There are some dedicated ice fishing in-line reels that would have more power than the Eagle Claw, but the same idea applies. Good luck out there.

These are the reels that I use on mine. They're the best I've found for weight and durability. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ice-Fishing-Reel-Plastic-Fly-Reel-6-pack-/281255303087?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item417c1f57af

Just make sure if you buy tip downs from somebody else that they're well designed. The devil is in the details. I purchased three tip downs several years ago from the old Bay Bridge bait shop that somebody had made. They looked like they were top quality, varnished nicely, with a sliding weight to balance properly. Well, I lost all three of them on Sodus in one day. It turns out that the notches in the top weren't deep enough and the varnish made the dowels slip right off them when a big fish hit. I did notice that CrappieGuy has attached his rods to the bases so they can't go down the hole, which is great. I made my own using Dave Genz perch rods and small plastic reels. I'll post a pic later if I can stumble out of the house...sick today.

There's no "right" answers, but here's my take. There's a time for tip ups, but they limit mobility and if flags don't fly, they can reduce your productivity. Choose wisely. 1. Yes, five per person, including your daughter. You need to label them with your name and address. 2. 30 feet apart is typical, more if you want to cover area and like to run. 3. Yes, it is true. However, you can catch perch on tip-ups, so long as you use small enough trebles (#8 is good). You can also catch pike on tip-downs. A reel on the tip-downs helps with that (simple straight line reel, not spinning). 4. It makes no difference how you weigh you spread. Stay close to your tip-downs in Braddocks or you may lose them to pike. 5. Not sure about the "best". Lightweight and functional models I use are made by HT, with big game polar therm extreme models for pike (these are round and cover the hole) and standard "polar" or "polar II" models for walleye and bass. Gambell swears by the black hole covers to eliminate ice build up in the hole. As for tip-downs, there's absolutely no reason to purchase these. Iceshanty has lots of ideas. Or go out on the ice and look. The things to consider are balance, balance, and balance. You want to see a fish fart on it. Spinning reels and really light rods are generally not good for this reason (although mine use light Dave Genz rods with an ultralight spool, as I like the feel, but they're not as sensitive as others I've seen). Tip-downs aren't for fighting fish, they're just visual aids and most of the fighting is done by hand, just like a tip-up. Good luck! Stay frosty.