HT InstaShak for Ice Fishing

OK - it appears that due to their immens popularity, everybody and his brother is building ice fishing pop-ups and HT is no different. At first, when I heard HT was making an ice finsh pop-up shelter, I had a bunch of assumptions that entered my head. We've sold a lot of HT ice fishing products over the years and many of them have been pretty good, but some of them have not done so well and drove us nuts! When I heard about this new InstaShak I drew conclusions on the "half empty side" of the glass and BOY (!) was I wrong!!

THE InstaShak Scoop by Joe:
The tent in the pictures that you see here is a really nice pop-up! Compared to Eskimo and Clam, it had some features that made it easily stand up and be noticed by me. Set-up was EXACTLY like Eskimo, Clam Shappell, Eastman and any other pop-up on the planet and in about 45 seconds which is paar for a good pop-up. The first thing I noticed was the stitching quality. Nice and even, just like Eskimo and Clam. Then I went inside and noticed another detail: all the seams were neatly finished off with a binding that covered the exposed edges. Eskimo does not have finished edges inside, Calm does. Not a huge deal but it was a step in quality that I didn't expect to see from HT. Then, top the whole thing off with double (that's TWO) doors in the 6 X 6 InstaShak. The size of the InstaShak is just about the same as as the Clam Basecamp, both of which are a little bigger all around than the Eskimo Quick Fish 3. With 2 doors, you don't have to step over anybody's gear to get out and that's handy especially when the morning's coffee kicks in. The doors have two zippers which where very heavy duty and both meet up at the sideways point of the yellow triangle. Unlike Eskimo and Clam where you have two zippers that go around a curve this may or may not be a little faster to use.

HT's InstaShak comes with all necessary tiedowns and ice anchors plus a nicely made carrying bag that is a little more solid than the Eskimo bag. It's also black. Whoopdeedoo! If you believe that black is warmer, I'm gonna have to disagree with you here. I fished all of last winter in a black pop-up and when it's a sunny -15 F below to +10 above, I really can't say that I noticed a huge gain in the inside temps from the black material except when I put my hand on the sunny side of the shelter. Sure, at +30 F, it'll turn into a sauna in the sun, but then you may want to sit out on the open ice to catch some Vitamin D when you have the chance. Winters are long in NE Minnesota and we get to looking mighty pasty by spring. In colder temps, I still opted to use a Mr. Heater Portable Buddy which did a nice job.

NOTE: I would have to recommend against ANY ice fishing shelter heater that does NOT have a low-oxygen shut down sensor built into it. With snow piled on the flap around the bottom, all pop-ups are pretty airtight and I had my heater shut down on me at least three times last winter. I had to open the door for a bit and then it would re-fire right up. While I don't feel I was anywhere near having monoxide poisoning problems, had I been using a sunflower type of heater with no safety shut-down, I believe that I might have found myself in a pickle. Sometimes, you just get really sleepy and then you wake up dead. Not so good...

Order your Instashak 3-Man Here

Weighs 23 lbs. .

Base is 72" X 72"
Middle is 94" X 94"
Over 6 feet tall in center

A little bigger than the Eskimo Quick Fish 3 and the same size as the Clam Basecamp and the Shappell Icehouse 6000. They are virtually identical in function and operation. Both the Quick fish 3 and the Ice Cube are a little smaller than the Shappell Icehouse 6000 and the Clam Basecamp. Fast, easy setup.