Looking at this picture makes you realize there must be some very tall people who like to ice fish!  So, once you have the hole drilled through the ice, there is no way for you to get your line down into the depths of the water unless you clear out all the slushy stuff and ice chunks left from the drilling process.

Most of us have a scoop like this one:

They work really well, are very inexpensive and some even have handles that will float should you drop it in the hole.  Mine don’t…but I’ve never dropped one yet.

Well, I ran across a new devise that makes the job of scooping out the ice quicker.  Watch this video:

Pretty slick I’d say!

So, here you are ice fishing, is it cold outside?  Usually and of course the water in your open ice fishing hole will begin to freeze over.  You are constantly using your ice scoop to keep it open.  Again, in my searches on the web, I run across a lot of great ideas and here are a couple more.

These would be very useful if you are fishing when it is EXTREMELY cold outside, or where you might be using  two or more poles, maybe even one of them with a Jaw Jacker setup.  The Jaw Jackers don’t allow you to clear the ice in the hole without undoing the setup and moving it away from the hole.  This idea would free you up from any ice buildup whatsoever.

Now you know how to make one, what do you do with it?

I took this picture off the internet.  So, it shows keeping the ice clear from two holes and I suppose if you were using one hole for your fish finder and the other to fish from this would work perfectly.  It certainly makes sense to me and reminds me of a time fishing a tourney, where we had to try and keep our fish alive until an official could come and measure them.  We drilled a hole in the ice about a foot deep, near one of our ice fishing holes and channeled the water into that hole.  We called it the “Hog Trough”!  Another story.

Back on track.  So the distance from the coffee can to the hole would probably have to be fairly close, like maybe a couple of inches…just guessing.

As usual, one thing almost always leads to another and so I did find something called a “spitter”.  This is a take off of the coffee can idea, only more elaborate.  I just might have to make one of these  “just because”…mostly to see if it actually works.

With this being a patent pending idea, I would have to modify it quite a bit and my initial thought is to use the coffee can idea and incorporate the coiled tubing.  It appears to me that the lower end of the tubing would protrude out the bottom of the coffee can and would suck cold water up and the heat from withing the coffee can would cause the cold water to get hot and spit out the upper end of the coil…thus the name “spitter”….The spitter end would be aimed at the hole you wanted to keep open and the hot water would surely keep the ice from forming.  Great idea!

Some of you are probably thinking….What happened to grabbing your ice auger and a bucket with your pole and bait in it and going fishing?  Good thought, but gizmos and stuff are what this world is all about…why keep it simple?

Bears Butt

January 19, 2014