A $50,000 ice fishing house

An engineer and fishing enthusiast develops a mobile fish house for ice fishing, complete with high-end accoutrements.

By Aviva Erlich, FSB Magazine

(FSB Magazine) -- In past years ice fishing meant pitching a small "fish house" onto the ice, chiseling a hole, and hoping you'd chosen a spot with hungry fish.

That was until Tom Lykken, engineer, avid fisherman and co-owner of SnoBear Industries (snow-bear.com), based in West Fargo, N.D., developed the world's first motorized fish house in his garage.

The SnoBear is a fully equipped fish house that can be driven along the ice on tracks and skis. It lowers itself at the flip of a switch, and built-in power drills cut as many as six fishing holes into the lake's surface.

The vehicles, which cost from $33,000 to $50,000, can be customized with anything from satellite TV to GPS-enabled fish-tracking devices. They also come equipped with escape hatches, just in case.

"Summer fishing went from rowboats to speedboats, and ice fishing has too," says co-owner Greg Hatten. "We've created a wintertime boat."

The SnoBear is now in its second year on the market. The company, which employees a staff of 15, took in just under $3 million last year; it expects revenues to double in 2007.

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.