John - Glad to hear you had a good time. Couple of other tips I would point out is I typically use no bigger then 2 lb line, and just recently i switched to 1 lb line as the bite gets tougher. with 1lb line you can't just swing the fish out of the hole and show off to all of your buddy's, you have to slide them out onto the ice so you don't stress the line. Fishing 1 lb line you will lose some fish, but I think sometimes it helps catch more also. I even re-tie my jigs every so often as it seems after about 20 fish the knot will break. I also have a box full of jigs, but very few of them are larger then #12 hooks, some are as small as #18.