Spear and Tip-Up Provide Winter Fun for Fishermen

If the Michigan ice fisherman had an official coat-of-arms, it would very likely consist of a tip-up laid across a multi-tined spear. Those two pieces of equipment provide more fun each winter than nearly anything else you could name when it comes to a day on the ice.

While some of the larger, deeper lakes still have open water, many lakes from one end of the state to the other are now covered with ice, and anglers are swarming out to take advantage of the fine fishing it affords. Once the ice thickens to at least four inches, shanties can be set up and "double fun" can begin. That's what you have to call the combination of tip-ups with spearing.

Sitting inside a darkened spearing house is plenty interesting, especially when fish are moving down below. But most spear fishermen extend their chances by setting up a tip-up not far from the shanty, thus increasing the odds for action. Occasionally, that can lead to some strange happenings.

For example, one winter a friend was doing exactly that on big Houghton Lake, when a nice-sized northern pike came swimming into the spearing hole. He grabbed the spear and made an accurate shot with it, and was just bringing the fish up into the shanty when shouts from outside caused him to open the door.

His tip-up flag was waving in the wind, obviously set off by a striking fish. He dropped the spear, with the pike still impaled on the tines, and went running toward the tip-up. Careful feeling of the line seemed to indicate no fish was there, but the angle of the monofilament was puzzling, since it seemed to be just under the ice and was running right toward his shanty.

The mystery was solved when he discovered the pike had first grabbed his minnow on the tip-up, then swam in the general direction of the shanty. When the fish appeared in the spearing hole, the fisherman had slammed the barbs into it, not realizing it was already well hooked. In short, he got double fun out of just one pike.

Actually, if he works it right, a fisherman can set out two tip-ups while spearing inside a shanty. The only stipulation is the one that prohibits use of any hook on the spearing decoy, since Michigan law just allows two lines with hooks in use at the same time. If the decoy is artificial, it is merely tied onto a line, and there are no hooks i n v o l v e d . With a live sucker or minnow, though, a hook is often used to hold the decoy.

Conservation officers frown on fishermen who cheat a little by using more than two lines with hooks, and that infraction can often prove quite costly in court.

To help keep fishermen honest, a law adopted in recent years requires that all tip-ups must bear the name of the owner. This is designed to prevent fishermen in a crowd from denying they know who the extra tip-ups belong to. Unmarked tip-ups are picked up by officers, which is expensive considering their cost.