As you may have seen in my February 2020 Ice Fishing stories on the Crew Adventures page, I recently purchased some new ice fishing sticks from Outdoor Pros. They are made by a local fella in Paradise and he does a beautiful job. His sticks come painted in the Republic of NL flag & Labrador flag colours. I wanted 6 sticks for my set (enough for 2 people) so I picked up one pair of Republic of NL, one pair of Labrador and an extra set that I would custom paint. I decided to paint my last pair in colours representing the new Newfoundland Flag creating a unique 2-person set.

I think the finished product turned out great and I already had these colours in Tremclad paint in stock!  The only changes I made to these lines were removing some of the spinners that came with the lines and using my own and/or hook/worm only, and installing some lead weights.

The sticks are made from 3/4" dowel and are nicely milled at the end to hold lots of line.

The sticks work well enough stuck in the snow, but when paired with these HT brand folding stick holders, you have the ultimate set up. No way they can fall into the hole, worst case a big trout spins off some line.

These sticks are a nice colourful upgrade over my old plain spruce sticks that served me well for a long time. It's also great to support a nice local artist who put a lot of time into making these new ice fishing lines.

March 2020 update: I've made a few improvements to my new ice fishing lines, first I wanted a way to quickly retrieve line when I finished fishing for the day particularly when fishing in deep water. I always have my cordless drill with me to run my ice auger, so I made a drill adaptor for each line by partially installing a 2" deck screw leaving the smooth section of screw exposed.

Next I cut off the screw head creating a perfect attachment point for my cordless drill.

Lastly I swapped out the green string for a better quality black braided line purchased at Outdoor Pros, my new drill adaptors worked perfectly for this operation!