So you hit the ice and have a day to fish and all of a sudden you find that your “eyes” are toast. After trading batteries and transducers with half the people on the ice, what do you do? Do you whine and howl and just close up shop letting this little event spoil your whole day and go home or do you use the smarts and continue fishing? I can’t believe how many people act like they just passed a kidney stone if their flasher poops out on them.
If that were to happen to me, I reckon it would be tip up time.
When I first got my elite for ice I got dropped off on a spot on Leech and left for couple hours while others searched as well. Couldn’t figure the thing out for the life of me and shut er off. Determined to drill holes and find fish either way I felt like I connected with my whole presentation better without it, really made me focus on what was happening on my end rather the screen.
Don’t get me wrong I’d rather have it then not but enjoyed my time that evening.
I can’t believe how many people act like they just passed a kidney stone if their flasher poops out on them.
I can’t believe it either.. I’ve ice fished for quite some time now. I also have had a hard house on the Big Pond for 11 years, and have never owned a flasher.. I know, call me crazy! Sure, I’ve borrowed one when searching for the now non existent Perch and played around with my buddies flashers in the house. But I honestly have never “needed” one to fish or have a good time. I enjoy playing cards, with cocktail of choice in hand, and waiting for that slow jingle of the rattle reel. My Fish house is my get away, my winter cabin. I love it & wouldn’t change a thing! No flasher needed for this guy. 
Tom, in general many people are becoming spoiled brats with the demand for instant gratification. I don’t deny that i love the convenience of my electronics. I use them extensively. But if they take a crap, at least i can still fish without them. Did it for years and i still know how to do it now. Will I need to work harder and “blindly” – yes, but not a reason to quit fishing.
I don’t want the bulk and extra weight of my spare flasher hauled around on the ice. but since i do a lot of multi-day trips out of town, i do have a spare flasher in the truck. Nothing fancy or elaborate.
Do you whine and howl and just close up shop letting this little event spoil your whole day and go home or do you use the smarts and continue fishing?
Actually sometimes this has been a yes for me but scenario dependent. If I’m just out for a lark on a weeknight and after suspended crappies. Not much invested and if I don’t know if I’m on fish then I might go home. More true if I’m alone.
If I’m walleye fishing, all day hard house, or with other people for conversation or cards: that’s another story.
I fish alone a lot, insert jokes here 
If I don’t have the engagement of the flasher or a reason to be optimistic about fish then I might head home.
I kicked my lx7 across the ice one day when it crashed with blue vertical lines all over the screen. Drove 500 miles for a week long trip. When my tools let me down, I get a little ticked. I buy quality and expect it to do the job. Marcum fixed it and upgraded it to an lx9. Luckily I have several fish finders and made it work. Fishing for lake trout in 80’ with most coming off of bottom, but many coming through at different depths is a blast with electronics. Can I fish without a flasher and have success? Yes, I choose to fish like this in many situations and enjoy it very much. However, when I want to fish with them, they better work.
< But I honestly have never “needed” one to fish or have a good time. I enjoy playing cards, with cocktail of choice in hand, and waiting for that slow jingle of the rattle reel. My Fish house is my get away, my winter cabin. I love it & wouldn’t change a thing! No flasher needed for this guy.
And I thought I was a rather passive ice angler since my preferred apparel for ice fishing is pajamas and slippers in a sleeper house too. Without a flasher, sure I’d have rattle reels down (which I do anyway) or setup a dead stick with a slip float so I could watch my bobber all day. 
That being said, although the flasher is not a requirement…it does make the ice fishing somewhat more engaging. I will spend several hours at a time watching whatever activity is going on down there. You can usually tell the perch from the walleyes on how they approach the bait. That and there are times when you can determine the mood of the fish by watching how they react on the flasher. Fluttering the spoon steady, or slowly raising and dropping or more aggressive jigging. These you can see while using the flasher.
Can’t wait for it this year. 
If that were to happen to me, I reckon it would be tip up time.
Would go this route if I had the proper bait with me, for sure. I fished for lots of years without a flasher so I’d probably try to get creative.
<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>watisituya wrote:</div>
If that were to happen to me, I reckon it would be tip up time.Would go this route if I had the proper bait with me, for sure. I fished for lots of years without a flasher so I’d probably try to get creative.
True, not sure how much action you’d get dangling a jigging Rap underneath a tip up. 
I forgot my LX7 at home on a day trip up to Red. I made the most of it however, and the fish weren’t biting like I thought they should.
Last year one of my sons and I went up to the family cabin for a weekend of ice fishing. After we got everything loaded we took off to the lake. After unloading the wheeler and otter I asked my son where the Marcums were at? He gave me the deer in the headlights look and said that he forgot them. We were on a completely new body of water that I had absolutely no clue about. We headed out and fished and did ok for ourselves and we still have a good laugh about it. Electronics are great and I enjoy using them but I don’t think I would ever give up fishing time just because I didn’t have them.
So you hit the ice and have a day to fish and all of a sudden you find that your “eyes” are toast. After trading batteries and transducers with half the people on the ice, what do you do? Do you whine and howl and just close up shop letting this little event spoil your whole day and go home or do you use the smarts and continue fishing? I can’t believe how many people act like they just passed a kidney stone if their flasher poops out on them.
Can’t imagine or even fathom that scenario….. but then again I have always had a Vexilar!
Just do it the way we did 35 years ago. Have a blast!
If I forget my flasher or the batteries or anything along those lines it does not bother me too much. I never seem to mark fish anyway! 
If I forget my flasher or the batteries or anything along those lines it does not bother me too much. I never seem to mark fish anyway!
If you are not marking fish, you are fishing were there is no fish or you need help to learn to run your flasher.
Totally situational for me. If I’m out tip-up fishing then I can forgo the flasher(although I still think it’s helpful to really get right off of a weedline or something).
If I’m out in a basin searching for crappies or panfish or on an unfamiliar lake, I’d start considering packing up. I have a few walleye spots on some local lakes that I have always fished at night and usually do pretty well on. I’ve NEVER caught one on my bobber rod, everything has come on jigs. Without a flasher I probably wouldn’t have caught 90% of those fish.
It’s the difference between searching for fish or letting the fish search for you.
If you are not marking fish, you are fishing were there is no fish or you need help to learn to run your flasher.
Reminds me of the first half dozen times I went fishing after I first got a flasher (I had not grown up ice fishing, and had no experience with how one should even look or operate) and never marked a fish. Didn’t know if the flasher didn’t work or if I didn’t know how to use it. Then as I’m jigging for walleyes about a foot off the bottom, up flys a dark red line followed by a big bite. The rest is history and I’ve learned a lot and been hooked since.
what do you do?
Tom,
I’ll kick this a little further.
Personally I have all but given up on ice fishing and the reason is primarily due to technology.
Living on the river I can take my boat out year round.
On my boat is the best fish finding technology available. With all my years of experience not a minnow can hide.
The ability for me to find fish is 20x what I can do on the ice. The ability to understand the underwater structure and identify why fish are where they are is uncanning.
If I go ice fishing I’m using 20+ year old technology. Sure they dress this 2d sonar in all kinds of pretty skirts these days including digital screens bla bla bla… It is still just a 2d sonar – the least technologically advanced part of my boat electronics.
So as you can imagine, if I were on the ice with a Flasher I already feel 10% the fish finding confidence I experience from my boat. If I had a broken flasher I’d simply go home. But more to my point is that a working flasher cannot hardly convince to me go ice fishing anytime. The amount of effort needed to reach the same level of underwater analysis is frankly impossible.
I’d probably go home if my boat depthfinders didn’t work… But of course I have 3, so it is doubtful I’ll need to go home.
Drilling holes is for the rest of you I guess and there’s nothing wrong with it. I just don’t have to anymore to go fishing and I don’t fish (much) without the best technologies accompanying me. I do enjoy a small river or stream with no tech… But they’re also so predictable it isn’t necessary for the most part… And I say that only after years of experience using technology to understand what’s happening and why below the surface.
To each their own.
I know when I did ice fish I wouldn’t leave home without a working flasher… And I travel with multiple batteries and sometimes two units just in case.
Sounds like you might be a good candidate for the pan optics ice fishing applications and figuring out 360° 3d imaging from a single point. I love my flashers, just depends on application, some places I could fish just fine with out one, others, I would rather do something else then waste my time fishing blind. I have extras of everything, why not make sure I can continue to fish the way I prefer to fish no matter what.
Sounds like you might be a good candidate for the pan optics ice fishing applications
I’d love to, just not ready to drop close to 8k to do it right. Hopefully the next boat, whenever I decide to do that, will be all Garmin
Same dilemma here.
I remember the days of fishing without one. It separates the men from the boys. You’re forced to be a better fisherman. You have to make decisions. Are the fish there and the presentation is wrong? Are you in the wrong spot? When you finally figure it out, man does that feel good.
Anyone can drop a flasher and camera down the hole and make those decisions in 10 minutes. It takes a real fisherman to gut it out and find a way to manufacture those bites on a tough day.
Love my flasher. Don’t get me wrong. But I’d rather fish without one than not fish at all.
A question for those talking about panoptix, etc. Genuinely curious how people feel, not casting aspersions:
At what point is it not fair chase anymore? Catching rather than fishing. At some point, does the game feel rigged and get less rewarding?
As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that’s the real beauty of hunting and fishing, and the true test of ones’s skill. It’s a puzzle. Just like Id rather not hunt over a corn feeder on a high-fence buck farm for something pumped with growth hormone, Id rather not know where every fish is in the lake before I wet a line.
How many days a year do you fish SW eyes? What species do you fish?
Do you fish for the Pail? For the trophy? A little of all?
Panoptix technology is not a cinch to get you fish. All it does is cut down the search time. You STILL have to convince the fish to hammer whatever it is you are offering to them.
It will not make a neophyte ice angler a great pro. After using on my boat I watched videos by Garmin employees using for ice fishing. I was stunned that I had not thought of it.
I posted about what an effective fish finding tool it was on another site. A lot of people derided my post. At 70 years of age I have grown used to be being laughed at.
Mostly because I mentioned that flasher technology is yesterday. Back in the day I was one of the first to use a flasher on the ice. My very first one was an old tan color lowrance that started at 120 ‘. Since most of my ice fishing was in 15′ of water or less. Most of that screen was wasted.
As my ice fishing group seen its effectiveness they soon become adopters of the same. Then came Vexilar with their 3 color flasher. In my youth I was on a strict fishing budget and had to wait until I stumbled on a deal for a used one. Again the group followed slowly but surely.
Next in progression after several models of Vexilar up to the FL-20. An old fishing buddy in Michigan took me to school. He had a Humminbird 788 with a quadrabeam transducer. He had modified it by shortening the cable of the transducer with a splice. The quadrabeam transducer enabled a search beam twice the depth of what depth of water being fished. example: 20 foot of water you could read a width of 40 foot. A flasher at 20’was employing apprx 6’ radius. add to the fact the 788 showed history and could provide mapping and storing waypoints.
That humminbird setup replaced all my flashers. It lasted until I started using the Garmin because of superior mapping and the Panoptix technology.
Each progression has added to my effectiveness. My basic theory is you can catch fish if you find them. But if you don’t find them…….. Finding them is no guarantee of success either. That is where the tool between your ears becomes most important. In spite of all this I do manage to come home skunked now and then. Which makes the good days all that more enjoyable.
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