Slushy ice and deeeeeep holes.

We got out three times in the last 5 days but they've been quick jaunts at best. We ordered a new auger, Lisa's dad's needed sharpening and I sharpened it and it was actually doing ok, but not good enough. Then I tried to resharpen it and made the mistake of touching the bottom of the blade, and then it wouldn't bite. We wondered if years of use may have bent the auger itself and when we saw that an entire new auger was only about $25 more than a new set of blades we figured what the hell. The new auger is identical to the old, a Strikemaster hand auger. The big difference is the new auger breaks down into two pieces making it easier to transport in packs if we ski in somewhere. We took it to Vallecito to test it and it took about 42 seconds to drill through 20 inches of ice. Oh baby. We only caught stockers, but what do you expect on a bright sunny day. I had dreams of catching some big sunnies at Pastorious so I ventured out there yesterday. The ice is slushy but thick. I bet it won't be thick for long. My first hole landed me right in weeds and mud about 2 inches below the hole. Nowhere seemed deeper than 8 feet or so and I didn't have a bite. Today we did what we said would be fun all season: skied into Little Molas Lake. The ice/slush combination was so thick we were laying on the ground trying to get the auger through. We did finally and found we had 5 feet of ice and about 3 feet of water under it. Sigh. The skiing was fun and on the way home we shot out to Lemon where we caught some little browns, little rainbows, and a lot of sun. Lisa caught biggest, I caught first. I think we both caught most.