This time of year is all about ice fishing.  The transition time between hunting and trapping!  A good time of year.

And most of you know that Weasel has gone out and spent a ton of money on an automatic hook setter in order to capitalize on my pocketbook….At a rate of $.25/fish, in order for him to recoup his investment it will take him 140 fish to pay himself back for that contraption.

When he said he had it, I told him, via Facebook, that it would not count in the quarters bet….he said it would count.  I’m a fair and honest guy and so I will let him use it, he needs all the help he can get.  I’m really surprised that he doesn’t use his “two pole” permit card on me to boot.  But we have pretty much established that when someone is using two poles that they have to designate which one is the quarter bet pole.

So, again in fairness to Weasel and any other fisherman who cares to bet quarters with me,  I will honor his costly investment and hope that he can recover his investment before I get put six feet under.  140 fish will do it, but keep in mind, every time I catch a fish it makes his goal one fish farther away.

So, I’ve just been talking about me and him fishing, he has other buddies that I’m certain he can out fish regularly.  I’ll bet he spends more time fishing with them than he does with me, at least until he recovers his investment.

BUT, not to be outdone, and liking to think I can do as well or better than him, I went in search of “Do it Yourself” automatic hook setters and sure enough…I found a good one!

http://www.livingflylegacy.com/2013/12/diy-ice-fishing-automatic-hook-setter.html#comment-form

Copy and paste that one!

Yesterday, I started looking around the garage and the yard sheds and found all but two of the items needed to put one of these bad boys together and when I got back from town, having spent $4.48 for the two parts I didn’t have, I built one of my own!

This baby is ready for action and to fine tune the trigger does not take very long.  I can almost count the number of hooked fish I’ll be catching on my next trip out!  I can hardly wait!  FISH ON!!!!  And dancing to the tune “I’m in the money”!!!!!

The guy’s idea for this DIY rig, has you tying on a looped piece of line at the end eye of your rod and placing that loop over the middle nail and while that does work very well, I found that I can put my end eye on the trigger itself and still get the job done without having a loop that just might get tangled while fighting a fish.  I have yet to see if the looped line will be a problem or not.

So, since I have four ice fishing poles, I tried them all and one of them will not work with this setup…it’s too short of a pole.  Unless of course I wanted to drill another hole or two closer to the end of the setup.  I just might drill those holes…

So, Two of the remaining three poles can be set up using this idea, while the third one has to have a loop of line on it.

Of course any time you build something like this there will be some adjustments that need to be made and some fine tuning here and there.  I’m already thinking about taking the trigger assembly apart and making the holes a bit larger so the trigger is more “hairy”.

This is fun!

Bring LOTS of extra quarters fellas!

Bears Butt

January 14, 2014

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