 What's up guys, Joe Holland here. I am getting ready for another ice fishing season up here in Maine. Super, super jacked about it. It's coming really slowly. Our winter has been crazy mild so far. We've seen a lot of rain, seen a lot of warm days, so there's not much for ice. So in the meantime, what I've been doing is getting my ice fishing stuff ready and spending a ton of money because I'm not out there fishing. If I was out there fishing, I probably wouldn't be spending all this money. But I have a lot of new gear to go over and show you and put to the test this year. And you're gonna get a nice, honest report on all this stuff by the end of the year. I'm not gonna open a box and tell you how good something is before testing it and trying it and really putting it through the hard winter test of ice fishing in Maine. I'm super pumped up for this season. Feel free to put a comment in there on what type of stuff you wanna see this year on the channel. And for those of you just tuning in to the channel, thanks for tuning in for the returning subscribers and returning viewers. Man, I really appreciate it. As you can see, the channel is a lot of fun. Let's go over the new stuff and talk about why I bought it and how I'm gonna use it. Little disclaimer here, guys. None of this stuff is at all sponsored. I'm not affiliated with any of these companies. I've been through the sponsorship game in the past and it's really hard to get a real sponsorship and a full sponsorship. Product sponsorships or discounts are not really sponsorships and they don't really help the industry that much. It might help a company, but it turns out a lot of guys end up spending their own hard-earned money on it and then promote the heck out of something that they don't get any ownership in. So anything that I have here paid for fully with my own money out of my pocket, let's go over the new stuff. So this, as you've seen before, I've run the 40-volt StrikeMaster lithium auger for two full seasons now. I've probably drilled over 4,000 holes. I get a ton of holes out in the first year. I ran it with one battery, the original battery. No problems at all. Second year I thought it'd be a good idea to pick up a second battery and I was really surprised with how well the second battery did compared to the one-year-old battery. So I figured this year I might as well have a third battery so I'll be running three batteries this year. Won't have to worry about charging at all on these long trips out there, ice camping and ice fishing. So another 40-volt. I'll get that thing charged up before the season starts. Alrighty, I picked up four of these beauties this year. These things are huge. This is the Big Bob by JackTraps made right here in Maine. I fish both Heritage Lakers and JackTraps and I have several different sizes and models of the JackTraps that I use. But I figured it'd be a good idea whereas I'm getting a little bit more into the Togue vision. I got a trip plan for Moosehead. A trip plan for East Grand. Another trip on West Grand. And there's a lot of ice and we set these things really far away. So having the taller flag, the taller trap and a little bit deeper under the ice with the four-inch spool, I thought it would be a great idea. So while I was down at Sobego Bait for their open house, Wayne had some incredible deals going on and I picked up a set of four JackTraps. Now why four, why not five? In Maine we're allowed five lines but almost all the time you're gonna catch me jigging and jigging with the electronics. So I'll have four of these babies rigged up for Big Lake Trout or a Cusk. I'm pretty excited to use those. I got different color flags. You'll be seeing those put to use this season I hope. Oh yeah, another thing about JackTraps too is absolutely incredible quality. I have a set of JackTraps that I probably got in the mid to late 1990s that I've beaten on. My little buddy Gage used them for probably the last five or six years. And after 20 years we finally went through them and just did some general maintenance on them. But the quality on these JackTraps is really unsurpassed. They are a trap. If you buy them, you got them for life and you could expect them to last at least one lifetime if not more along with the auger. For some reason I keep cracking these StrikeMaster blades. Last year I drilled through and hit rocks going for Brook Trout and blew out a pair of blades. And then I think another two times I actually cracked the blades out of one of the screw holes. So I always like to have at least one extra set of these on hand, maybe two. I'll bring one set on any trip I go on. So I have them there and then usually have another set in the truck or at home. Late last year for the very last trip of the year I ended up picking up an Otter XT Pro Cabin tow behind Flipover Shack. So I thought that'd be an awesome idea because I'll set my Eskimo tent up and sleep in my tent and when I go out to fish, it's really hard sometimes when the winds rip in or the weather conditions are just brutal. So it'd be nice to have that little one, one for shooting videos in and two for beating the weather and being able to fish wherever I want to, whenever I want to and tow it behind. So I picked that up last year, assembled it. I got to use it for one trip, the very last trip of the year and then I bought a lot of the extras that I need for it. I bought this year. So some of those extras are a cover. I love the Otter covers. They go over them and just they keep all the weather and the snow and everything else. So there's the cover for those, for that second one I have. There is the actual shack I have right there. That's what it looks like. So there it is. Along those lines, I also got the hitch pin with a cotter pin. Those are always good. And then I got a universal rear sled hitch receiver and pin. Oh, it's got a little tiny pin but I'm gonna use this one. This one's a lot better than that little tiny one. But that's a plate right there and the hitch so I could tow both of my Otter sleds together, tandemly. Is that a word, tandemly? Or in tandem. So I'll have two sleds behind my snowmobile and that's what's gonna allow me to do that. Runners, now I highly recommend these. I bought the large Otter last year for ice fishing and I put these on right away and I'm super glad I did because I ended up dragging it over rock, sometimes over dirt road, sometimes over pavement. And rather than wear out my awesome sled and wear the bottom of that out, you just wear these runners down. And last year, I didn't wear them down too badly but I was really glad that I didn't wear my sled down and I wore these high-fax runners down. So that kit will go to my cabin pro. All right, something I'm really excited about that I've never had before. I got to use Wayne's from Sobego bait. He had the K drill and I got to use it last year. I was super impressed with it. This is an eight and a half inch model. Really excited to use this thing this year. I have the Milwaukee drills. Let me get this maybe open up. That she cuts pretty nice. I already have my Milwaukee drill set. So I figured it'd be a good idea to have one of these for whole hopping, for pan fishing, for jumping around or just a half when there's less ice. I've had no problems with my strike master. It's been great, but I really kind of thought it'd be a good idea to have one of these too. Alrighty, that's what it looks like. And I am gonna put that baby to use this year and give you guys the honest review after using it for a full year. K drill. My clam auger drill plate. There we go. I got one of these because I heard people were actually breaking their hands or wrists when the Milwaukee drill catches for snaps and there's just so much torque on these that you could actually get hurt. And rather than lay the drill down and the battery down on the ice, I used one of these last year too and I really liked it. So I decided to pick one up. So it feels a little bit more like an auger and it doesn't add too much weight. It feels like five or six pounds. And with that, I got the auger adapter too. So we'll put that baby together pretty soon and give that a try, spin it on the Milwaukee. Also with the auger house, I got this little side kick I picked up the other day. It's a Bego bait. Well, kind of cool. You could, you could mount it on a bucket on the top of a bucket, but the reason it has a slot right here is it can go inside of that sled and tent lock down. Three rod holders, a couple like cell phone holders, bait holders, coffee holders and probably other bait holders too in there. So I think that thing's gonna be handy in that little tow behind the shack. Let's get into the big stuff. Now this is not something that's new on the market this year, but it's new to me. I fished with one of these up at West Grand with Brandon and the boys and was really impressed by it. So decided I'd pick one up for the viewers' pleasure of this channel for not only myself to become a better fisherman and see what's going on down there, but also for the viewers. And I'm hoping the LX9 sonar on it works really good in 150 foot deep or more when I'm down on the Tobago Lake jigging for a lake job. So this is the camera, it's underwater camera with 75 foot of cable and also a sonar unit as well. So that's the Markham, pretty excited about it. We're gonna see, hopefully it records to a card so I can upload that footage for you guys. With that, I have the wireless camera panor. So that way you could spin your camera with a push of a button and really lock it into where your jig is. Another big purchase for this year is the Garmin 1022. This one I got, I had no problems with my 93SV for the live scope, but I got tired of putting a GoPro mounted to the front and didn't get like awesome footage. You know, and it's really hard to get the GoPro mounted just right, not be in your way so you could still see your unit and also record without like a glare or without losing any of that clarity. So with this unit, we could actually record right to helm. So with an iPad or a cell phone, we should be able to record the screen onto a cell phone and I should be able to upload it to videos for you guys. So I haven't gotten rid of my 93SV, the touchscreen one. This one does not have the touchscreen just in case this doesn't work the way I'm hoping but I'm really hoping that this is gonna be a game changer for getting that live scope footage up on the screen for you guys to view at home. I picked up another one of these rods made these clam Mac Jason Mitchell rods. I really liked the ones that I used last year for Lake Trout, they were strong. This one is a 38 medium heavy. It's pretty stiff. It's got some backbone. So I'm thinking this will be good for like your average size to midsize Lake Trout that are in 70 foot or less and it should be a decent bass rod as well. So it's got some backbone. We'll put that to the test this year but I've been happy with these rods so far. Another big purchase. I bought the Frable Magnum Bait Station 30. This one is the 30 quart. It comes with two aerators built right in to the back right here. Let's see are they locked in? Those are locked right in. Two aerators built right in. They have a plug that I could plug it into my truck. They also can run on batteries too. So I'm excited about that. Inside it's the big size for my big bait. It's got a tray, a divider tray that you can put in a couple different slots. If you want it, you know, if you got smelt over here and shiners over there or suckers so they're not beaten up on your other bait or you could take it right out and have that size there. I'm excited about having an awesome bait bucket. I know that doesn't sound like anything that should be getting me excited for but when you're fishing like 20 below zero or anywhere around zero, your five gallon pails freeze up and it just becomes a mess. And with the price of bait, I thought it'd be a good idea to have one of these. Now my friends that have owned the Frables in the past have really, they've really done well with them. The bait does extremely well on them but my buddies had trouble with these clips breaking. I don't know if it was the last generation or if these clips are gonna need to be replaced too but they replaced theirs with rubber ones that they got from the hardware store. So if I end up replacing those or breaking them, you guys will be the first to know but I'm pretty excited about having that great big bait cooler right there by Frables. New traps, new line. That's the wax nylon right there. I like the wax stuff. Let's just tip up line. This one's 36 pound test, 1,000 yard spool. I usually like orange but that tan's gonna be pretty good right there. So I picked up one of those. I got a handful of these things somewhere in the house but these are the ones by 13 fishing. It's basically just a tiny, tiny rattle trap. I've done extremely well on these for brook trout and even for lake trout when they're finicky. It's just got enough rattle to get their attention and the flash and size is good too. Little treble hooks catches even the smaller trout. I picked up a couple small things of line. There's three and four pound test for my pan fishing. All right, these tubes I'm pretty jacked up about. These are made by Mission Tackle. As you can see, they have a kicker treble hook behind them. Probably gonna have a chunk bait on the back of those. These are for, these are what I'm gonna use for big lake trout. These are three quarter and half ounce. I kinda would like to see them a little bit heavier but this is what they had in stock down the Sabago bait. I like the colors on them. Can't really go wrong jigging a big five inch tube for lake trout or a four inch tube. All right, these were the ones that I did really well with last year on Crappy. Most pan fish just can't resist these things. I like the perch color. I couldn't remember the name of it last year but Northland Tackle makes these. They're called Slurpee Small Fry. It's basically a little tiny tube. It's got the jig head in it and a small hook. This year I got it in three different colors. I got the perch, I got the Crappy and I got the Golden Shiner or Silver Shiner. They don't weigh much. They're a 16th of an ounce but they work really well on Crappy and other pan fish when the bite is super light. Then on the other side of the spectrum you got your bigger jigs for jigging. These ones I have two ounce. I have one ounce, two and one ounce big jigs with a kicker hook, treble hook to throw some chunk on. These I'm gonna use down to Sabago Lake going for those lake trout in anywhere from 170 to 120 foot deep. Get down there quick and just hopefully get into a pile of big lake trout. So that's the small and the big. All this stuff's pretty much Northland Tackle. It's a company I like a lot. They make some really good stuff in the winter. Once again, I'm not affiliated at all with them. They don't even know I exist. So these are some more perch. These will be good for bass or really big pan fish and these go down to quarter ounce, three eighths and quarter ounce. Hair jigs work awesome in the winter. You can trim them, make them a little bit smaller if you want or you could leave them that long. These are quarter ounce and three eighths ounce with a great big eye on them. Bucktail jigs. I'll be using those on most anything that swims in Maine. Always gotta get sounders. I don't know where all my sounders go. They're probably on every shirt I've ever worn or in the bottom of the wash machine or still in my pockets from last year. And then I seem to loan a lot out and you just, once you loan out a sounder you never get it back. So I always grab a couple sounders whenever I get the chance. There's already, there's some custom jigs and spins by Flu Flu. These are really tiny that I'll be using for pan fish this year too. So I got a bunch of different colors on those. They are marabou and hair jigs. Some hooks that I really like to use while I'm ice fishing with bait are the Drop Shot, the Gamakatsu Drop Shot hooks. These are the number twos. Have some octopus in four and eight as well. They work really good for your trout and your smaller stuff that you're using live bait on. Some Lindy fuzzy grub jigs that has the grub and the hair on them. Should be pretty sweet for pan fish. They're pretty big size, but I'm gonna be going for Monster Crappy this year. So we're gonna put some bigger baits in the water. Got an Exo jig, kind of looks like a smelt. One of the primary bait fish in Maine. Gonna use that for lake trout, vertical jigging. And then a couple Lindy darters. They make a lot of noise and a lot of rattles. Should get a lot of attention there. Two more items for this year's ice fishing season. Which I'm not sure, I'm not sure what I think of it yet. It's a little bit bigger than I was expecting. My old trusty Coleman that I thought you could never be the last couple times I've used it. The burners have been acting funny. I don't know if I'm running bad propane through it. If I got a couple bad bottles, if that's a thing or if it's clogged up. So in the market for it, I got this one. I got a really good deal on this one. This is the Fire Champion, three in one stove. The thing I like about it is it doesn't have the side shields, it's got the shields built right in. And you could fit a lot bigger pan or a griddle on it. It's a little bit heavier than my other one. So we'll see how that goes to start. But it comes with the Hyperflame, the Instastart. And hopefully we'll do pretty well with it cause I'll be doing a lot of ice camping this year. And then last but not least, I got a new chair. And I'm really excited about that. It's a very large aluminum chair that folds out because I am also very large and it's super, super comfortable. I went and got a snowmobile trailer this year at Scott's Recreation. While I was there, they had this chair set up in their camping department. And I sat in it and I was like really impressed by it. So I'm kind of excited about that. And cause while you're ice fishing, you end up using a chair a decent amount. So I'm excited about that too. That is pretty much it for new stuff this year. Other than a new snowmobile and snowmobile trailer, which the snowmobile's not here yet. We're running like already three or four weeks behind delivery on it. Snowmobile trailer's here. It's ready to go. I got the decking all down in it. And the auto behind shack is ready to go. I got a couple attachments for that. I'll let you know how that goes this year of fishing with that. I think it's gonna be really good. And I'll be able to get some even better footage by using that. That's all the new stuff for this year so far guys. I'm gonna put this stuff through the test. You know I'm gonna put it through the test. I'll give it some abuse and some use. And I'll let you know how it works out. If you guys have any questions on any of the stuff that I bought or why I bought it or how I'm gonna use it. Or if you have any comments on what you wanna see this ice fishing season, let me know. I'm super jacked up about this ice fishing season. There'll be a lot of winter camping, a lot of new lakes and a lot of new people in the videos.