Participants come from around the country - and the world - for this, the Brainerd Jaycees $150,000 Ice Fishing Extravaganza.

Levi and Casey Christianson come from Breezy Point. But their creation is well-traveled - from their creative minds to China and, ultimately, back to the Brainerd lakes area via boat and truck, with road trips to places like Cromwell and Ashland, Wis., on the side.

Their journey to get here - in a vendor's booth Saturday on Gull Lake's Hole-in-the-Day Bay during the Extravaganza - has been equally as lengthy. And while the Christiansons' IFishPro tip-up ice-fishing setup has been about two years in the making, it seems more like a lifetime.

In a way, it has been.

The brothers - Levi, 21, and Casey, 20, both Pequot Lakes High School graduates and students at Central Lakes College in Brainerd - are lifelong fishermen, growing up on Upper Cullen Lake. Among their annual fishing trips growing up was an ice-fishing excursion to Lake of the Woods. It was there, years ago, that they first thought about making a better tip-up.

Ice anglers know all about tip-ups - those ice-fishing rigs that are similar in appearance to a lid on a 5-gallon bucket. They fit nicely over an ice-fishing hole, with a flag that pops up when there's a fish on. Well, that's the idea.

Still, the concept is a popular one, with more and more tip-ups popping up at the Extravaganza each year. With tip-ups, anglers don't need to be as hands-on as they would with a traditional ice-fishing setup, allowing them to, well, concentrate on other things. A popular scenario is for anglers to fish in the comfort of their fishing shanty, with a tip-up a short distance away, usually within sight from a shanty window. Only when the flag pops up does the angler need to pay a tip-up much attention.

But more often than not, because of the rustic setup of a typical tip-up, it's a false alarm - it doesn't take much to trip the trigger and spring the flag.

The Christiansons knew that frustration and, about two years ago, finally decided to try their hand at improving on the decades-old tip-up setup while also incorporating a rod-and-reel experience (traditional tip-ups employ hand-over-hand "reeling").

"We were up ice fishing at Lake of the Woods. We were catching fish and my little brother hooked into a fish. He was bringing it in hand-over-hand and screwed up ... The fish wanted to run and there's no drag when you fish hand-over-hand," Levi said.

And so IFishPro was born. Or at least the concept for an ultimate tip-up setup. In the months to follow, there was much experimentation and many prototypes, with countless hours spent in the family shop and on the ice on Upper Cullen.

Unique features of the IFishPro include an adjustable rod holder, an easier-to-see double flag, a trigger with three tension settings, a bend in the flag rod that the brothers say helps eliminate false alarms and a high rear base that serves as a snowbreaker of sorts.

"The first (prototype) was kind of a joke," Levi said. "It didn't work as expected. The trigger and flag froze. Another problem was without the bend in the flag. And the double flag was one of the last-minute changes. We spent a lot of hours in that shop.

"We started in February 2009. We had a bandana as a flag. And the first time, on Upper Cullen, the flag was supposed to go up but the bandana was frozen to the ice. And there was no rod holder. We just put the rod in the snow bank."

"We went back to the drawing board a lot," Casey said. "We lived on Upper Cullen so just hopped on the snowmobile (to get out on the ice and experiment).

"We wanted to make ice fishing easier. Tip-up fishing is like an art."

With their passion for tip-up fishing and dedication to experimentation, it didn't take long for the brothers to make significant headway.

"At the end of March in 2009 we went to Buffalo Bay (at Lake of the Woods)," Levi recalled. "We took the six prototypes we had. They caught fish (northern pike) - an 18-pounder and two 14-pounders. When we realized (we could fish tip-ups with a rod and reel), we were like, 'wow, this is fun.' We grew up fishing tip-ups our whole life and now we were catching fish with a rod."

Then it was just a matter of tweaking the prototypes.

"It's been tedious," Casey said. "We'll use it for a little bit, then change one thing ... The double flag has been nice. Sometimes when it (the typical tip-up flag) pops up you can't see it.

"The only thing I think is a flaw - although it's not necessarily a flaw - is that you're going to have to maintain the line. The line is going to freeze. But you'll have that with any tip-up.

"The concept with the trigger and line channel - the trigger changed five times. Little things changed over time. With the wind protector, it was 'what other things can we change.' Because you're always getting snow in there."

"I'm most happy with the trigger," Levi said. "You can catch walleyes, northerns, anything. You can fish all with one tip-up. It's evolved into the masterpiece we had in mind. It (the trigger) has three settings - heavy, medium and light. You're guaranteed of no false flags."

So after only a couple of months, the Christiansons' dream had become a reality. But, as they would discover, the real work was yet to start.

"There was a big gap where we didn't really do anything - the patent was pending - from May 2009 to August 2010," Casey said. "And we weren't ready to show a lot of people yet. We were talking molds, packaging, pricing."

"There was no more tinkering," Levi said. "It was all a business structure. It went from 'Oh my God, this is fun' to the business side of it.

"The next step was getting a patent," Levi said of that process, which began in May 2009. "It was a big, major process. It was finally finalized and filed in August 2010."

"Then it was, 'let's go show the world,'" Casey said. "When they first arrived, we thought this is real now."

So far, sales have been fairly steady. But the Christiansons are hoping that, after a while, the product will sell itself. Their shipment of 5,000 tip-ups arrived from China - it's cheaper to have them produced there, the brothers said - just after Thanksgiving, and through early January, they said they had sold about 300 at $34.99 apiece. They've had a booth at a number of winter gatherings, including a show in the Twin Cities and the recent Ice Fest at Breezy Point, in an attempt to get the word out.

"The majority of our sales are online," Levi said, adding that the tip-ups can be found on eBay and on the company's website at ifishpro.com. "And they're in local mom-and-pop stores - at the Oasis (in Pequot Lakes), in Longville, Backus, Warroad, Duluth, Ashland, Wis., Cromwell, Pine River. In Warroad, we just drove up there and they bought six of them. Our next step is to get into the corporate world - Fleet Farm, Gander Mountain. It (sales) has been a lot of word of mouth."

And a lot of driving.

"We drive to Duluth. There's a lot of hours. It's like we're selling tip-ups to get gas to get to the next stop," Casey said with a laugh.

But by no means has it been a two-man show.

"We've had a lot of family help," Levi said.

"A lot of help from people we know," Casey added. "Dad (Mike Christianson) was a big part of it."

"We have an investor," Levi said, preferring not to name him. "He's a friend of our dad's. If it wasn't for that guy, we wouldn't have done it."

But, he added, there's still more to be done.

"We're working on a carrying case. It doesn't fit in a five-gallon bucket (like a typical tip-up)," Levi said. "We have some ideas to improve it and for other products and other things."

But on Saturday on Hole-in-the-Day Bay, it's about where the brothers have been rather than where they are going. And they've been here before.

"Me and Casey both fished it (the Extravaganza) when I was a sophomore and he was a freshman in high school in 2006," Levi said. "We didn't catch a thing. I fished it again that year it was real cold two years ago. I didn't catch anything. So it will probably be more exciting (being a vendor)."

"It's been received very well," Casey said of the IFishPro at other winter gatherings. "Those who tip-up fish get it right away."

BRIAN S. PETERSON may be reached at brian.peterson@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5864. To follow him on Twitter, go to www.twitter.com/brian_speterson. For his blogs, go to www.brainerddispatch.com.