Thanks, the new auger cuts just fine on the drill, far better than the joker out this afternoon with the gas powered auger with the dull blades. He couldn't get that sucker to cut or even bite into the ice with his full 200 pound plus weighing it down.

Different lake today from yesterday. First two crappies of the winter for us, both decent 10" fish, plus about 30 bluegills. All still swimming. Average was significantly bigger than the average we expected out of that lake, too, although no real trophies. Water depth was about 10', and best bait was a gob of red eurolarvae on a size 12 diamond jig. On the ice about 2:00 and heading for home about 4:30. So it was a pretty decent catch for the time involved.

Once again I gave the Gentz inline reel a good work out, and I tried out a spring bobber (the titanium wire one from Frabill). Both worked ok, but I remain somewhat less than impressed with both. They do have to be handled a little differently than what I am used to; so the testing continues.

The lake we were on has a stabilized shoreline thanks to WPA way back in the thirties; mostly it is walled. It is way down, easily three feet below normal, but the structure we were on was just about exactly where we remembered it. Next time I will take along the GPS which has set waypoints. We got coldfingers and packed it in before prime time really took off, too, or we might well have added to the crappie numbers. In years past that lake has had some exceptional dusk bites as opposed to the one we were on yesterday, that seems to roll up its sidewalks at dusk.

Both the bluegills and the crappies were bigger this year than in winter's past; so we are going back there tomorrow.