Well, you can't work all the time! When we moved to Michigan 24 years ago I had never gone ice fishing but I figured it was something that I was going to have to do. One of my first projects was to make this box to carry my stuff and it has worked fine all this time. Not shown is my hand powered auger which is already in the truck as we took it to the lake today to do some scouting.

My main fishing buddy is more than 10 years older than I and it is he who shames me into going fishing in bad weather more often than the other way around. We have had such a warm winter so far that there hasn't been any safe ice on any of the lakes. We went to three different lakes today, drilled a dozen holes and found ice from 2 1/2" to 4 1/2" thick. We'll have temperatures near 0 tonight and tomorrow night so the ice should be safe by the weekend. We're going Saturday morning to a place where we can fish near the shore and check the ice thoroughly before venturing out into deeper water.

Around here we fish for bluegills and crappies with 4lb. line and size 3 or 4 tungsten jigs. Because they call it fishing and not catching, sometimes we do well and sometimes we don't.