What a friggin idiot, God [8D]

A tip up is its own thing it has a spool that goes down in the water on a shaft and then on the other end of the shaft there is a notched trigger which you put the flag under and when a fish bites it makes the trigger spin causing the flag to go up alerting the user that there is a fish on the user then picks up the tip up which is usually frozen in the whole and you pull up the fish hand over hand.