I think most of us rely on tip ups to catch walleye and Northern Pike.

I'm not a huge tip up guy...they don't really appeal to me that much, so I've created rattle reels that seem to be a little more versatile for catching walleye, northern and perch; they're just easier to set up and deal with.

My fishing partner Chad absolutely loves fishing tip-ups. He's got a number of awesome tip ups that are more like my rattle reel setups. Someday maybe we'll even bring them back to the market and share them with the tip up fishing community.

While fishing those jumbo perch we set out a number of tip-ups in a circle around us and got a little finessy with the rigging. They were mostly set up for catching northern pike, so the steel leaders, the big weights and hooks were just too much even for the jumbo perch. So we downsized the presentation and bam! We caught 8,10, and 12 inch perch on those tip ups. They really increased our target area.

They certainly helped me identify a pattern according to flags popping and whether there was a fish there or not. They didn't bite on every tip up but there was a specific pattern to those tip-ups and dead sticks that caught fish.

I've realized fishing tip ups are important if you're trying to establish a pattern. One thing we didn't do and it would have been perfect for perch was to rig a few of those tip ups with drop shots. An idea Pat Kalmerton shared with is a while back. Hindsight is 20/20! I wish we would have used his drop shot method. I truly believe we would have iced more perch. It's a little more finessy and almost foolproof.