Home made fish shantys

[Jimboy]

I am seeing lots of those once very popular home made monster shacks for sale thease days , the ones where the ends fold in , cheap weaved tarp , and wooden floors and ends , takes 2 men and a kid to load them , after a few trips with thease heavy monsters , a trip to the fishing hole is in order for one of them nice new portable pop ups , and a buddy heater.
l been thru it all , now with my Eskimo 3 and buddy heater , life is easy , and wonder why l spent a week building something that would put a weaker man in a wheelchair for life.:scared:

[npauls]

I still use mine for trips where I know I won't be moving a whole lot if I have someone else with me who doesn't have a hut.

Right now I am planning a way to rig up a hand crank winch to the front of my truck box that is removeable along with some kind of fold up ramp so I can load my gear without hurting my back anymore then it already is.

I built the hut with my dad in a couple of evening since we had everything available for free already and really didn't have the cash to buy a fancy hut. It is also nice having your feet off of the ice the whole time.

Pretty good huts for a pretty cheap price for the most part. If I were to build another one I would only use a thick sheet of plywood for the bottom and then go pretty light weight for the rest of it.


Nate

[Geezle]

Like anything else they have their pros and cons. I think the biggest pro is price. This style of shack can be built for next to nothing with materials that are readily available to most people. They're also customisable to a certain extent, and in the ones I've seen I find the floor to be a nice perk. Make it with a dark coloured tarp and on a sunny day it'll stay reasonably warm on its own without a heat source.

That all being said, for portability the pop-up style tents are the cats arse. I can keep my little tent packed away in the Jeep for rapid deployment, and if I'm on the ice and want to move it's nothing to fold it up and hit a new location.

And of course I've spoiled myself so i find a heater of some sort to be a must :)

[Redfrog]

I built a couple when I used to come from B.C. to fish with my FIL at Christmas. He had one and it worked well. It was tight for two guys on 5 gal pails, but with the black tarp we never had to have a heat source. Often the coats came off.

They work well enough. I put skis from a garage sale on mine.