Expert Fishing Gear Reviews & Tips for Canadian Anglers
There’s a very specific kind of misery that comes from watching your auger, your bucket, and your favourite rod case slide sideways across glare ice while you chase them on foot. Anyone who’s tried hauling gear across a frozen bay in a hockey bag knows why the humble jet sled for ice fishing exists — … Read more
Anyone who has ever dragged a fully loaded tub across a windswept bay in February already knows the feeling: the rope goes taut, your boots slip, and the sled behind you might as well be filled with wet cement. That’s usually the moment the smitty sled vs jet sled debate stops being internet chatter and … Read more
If you’ve ever stood in a parking lot at 6 a.m., staring down a half-kilometre walk across open snow with a flip-over shanty, an auger, and a bucket of minnows dragging behind you like a stubborn mule, you already understand why anglers started building a smitty sled for ice fishing in the first place. It’s … Read more
There’s a very specific kind of heartbreak that comes with ice fishing: you’ve drilled six holes, set six lines, and you’re huddled in a shack sipping lukewarm coffee when you glance up to see… nothing. No flags. No wiggle. Just a flat, indifferent lake staring back at you. A windlass tip up exists to fix … Read more
Somewhere around your third trip to the auger shack, chipping a fist-sized chunk of grey ice out of a hole that froze solid in twenty minutes flat, you start asking the question every hard-water angler eventually asks: is there a better way? That question usually leads straight to thermal vs standard tip up, and it’s … Read more
Somewhere around your third trip out to a frozen lake, you learn the hard way that a regular tip-up and a Canadian winter don’t get along. The hole slushes over, the flag freezes in place, and you spend more time chipping ice than watching for a strike. That’s the exact problem thermal tip ups were … Read more
There’s a very specific sound a cracked plastic tip-up makes at -25°C. It’s not a snap so much as a sigh — a soft, defeated crunch that tells you your flag isn’t popping today, or possibly ever again. Every ice angler who’s fished long enough has heard it, usually at the worst possible moment, three … Read more
There’s a particular kind of heartbreak in ice fishing: you drill six holes, bait six lines, and then spend the afternoon jogging across the lake because your flags keep tripping themselves in the wind. Nothing’s biting. The wind is just messing with you. That’s usually where the gear conversation starts, and it almost always lands … Read more
There’s a specific kind of heartbreak reserved for hardwater anglers: you’re twenty feet down, a jig dancing above a school of suspended crappie on your flasher, and your line won’t come off the spool because it’s frozen into a solid little hockey puck. Braided line for ice fishing promises to fix a lot of that … Read more
There’s a specific kind of heartbreak that happens on the ice around January. You’re eight feet down, jigging a tungsten fly for suspended crappie, and something taps — barely, like a moth landing on a screen door. By the time the message travels up a stretchy line and registers in your wrist, the fish has … Read more