Complete novice to darkhouse spearfishing: tips, tricks?

[johnr]

I have always had a fear of falling into the big hole cut into the ice. I don't like being on my roof either.
Not a fear of heights, more so a fear of falling

 

[guywhofishes]

I have always had a fear of falling into the big hole cut into the ice. I don't like being on my roof either.
Not a fear of heights, more so a fear of falling

man...

 

[martinslanding]

I have always had a fear of falling into the big hole cut into the ice. I don't like being on my roof either.
Not a fear of heights, more so a fear of falling

How big of hole do you think is cut in the ice ???

 

[gatorbaiter]

Spearing is awesome if its clear and you see a pike at least every half hour, otherwise it can get really boring sitting in semidarkness staring into a hole. One thing that helps a lot is to set tipups around the house for extra action. When we do this we've noticed something intersting. We've had days where the pike would swim past the herring or minnows to check out your decoy and almost all pike come from the spear house. Others days you'd swear there wasn't a pike in the lake when your staring down the hole, but your catching quite a few on the tipups, sometimes just a few feet away from the house. Very annoying when your trying to show someone how to spear. Other days of course they will chase decoys and hit dead bait and neither way is better. So my advice is to set up a bunch of tipups also, it's save a number of spearing trips by turning them into tipup days.
Also if they're only hitting dead bait and not a moving decoy just hang a deadbait on a quickstrike down the hole instead of a decoy, then you can spear of handline one if they hit.
I've never seen much else down the hole with one exception. Watch a same size white sucker and a pike swim through side by side in tandem, so surprise me that i didn't chuck the spear until they were dissappearing and missed. I never could figure that one out, you would think a sucker would stay a long ways away from a pike.
My favorite spearing moment came on a mucky bottom. We weren't throwing the spear because it would stir up the bottom too bad in the five feet we were spearing in. This pike came meandering through and i made a stab at him. He was a little lower then i thought and I hit him on the top of the head without penetrating. Well the blow must have screwed up his navigation, he hit the afterburners but got going in the wrong direction, up. He came flying out of the water just as I pulled my spear back up out of the water. My instincts kicked in and took another quick stab and nailed him good, kinda like those flying silver carp you see . I speared him in the belly with the tines angled backwards right about in the bung hole. Came out of the house to show my buddy and he looked really confused. I challenge any of you spearers out there to spear a pike upside down, doubt i'll ever have another like that.
Another fun thing to do with your buddy when its quiet is run some light fishing line to his tipups when hes not looking. Then when he's busy reading the paper in the pickup you start popping flags from inside the darkhouse. It's a nice way to make his day more exciting.
When we go pike fishing we usually cut a live well in the ice with a small hole in the bottom to let water in. Works great to keep your pike lively and unfrozen until your ready to head home. If you have a rookie along ask him to bail the water out of the live well so you can get the pike easier at the end of the day. The kid i did it too bailed water for a good five minutes before someone took pity on him and told him why he wasn't winning. Nothing like a good practical joke to liven up ice fishing.

 

[Kickemup]

The lake I fished today had about 16 feet of visibility in a not so dark house. I'm going to try and get over there again this weekend and do some spearing.