Lake Erie on the Ice

Well 4 of us hit the lake at 1230, load everything up into the shanties and head off out of the 2nd Parking lot. Get on to the bare ice with 2 of us wearing ice cleats, and my two kids not. Well 100 yards out and the youngest goes on his ass with a thud, nothing hurt but his pride. We have to walk about 15 feet apart, only because the wind blows a little and the shanties instead of draggin behind you are out to the right at 3o'clock cause of the wind. WE get about 1/3rd or maybe a little more out in the bay and start running out of snow patches, so we set up on one of them, all to keep from sliding across the lake, well the guy I am with pulls out his auger and says it should work with part of a blade broken shouldn't it. The kids have thier auger and drill their 2 holes and we havent' even gotten 2 inches into the ice, so we get their auger and put in our 2 holes. I get the shanty situated and the other guy starts shoveling snow around the back of it. finally we get inside and clean out the holes, bait up and fish, we are in 9FOW, and nothing. Finally around 330 I get the first perch, its a whopper, probally around 3 to 3 & 3/4 inches long. He goes back in the lake, hindsight says I should have used it for bait. Around 4 I get another perch, this is the one pictured, he is around 5 inches, my oldest kid caught another perch about the same size. We finally pack it up around 440 or so and call it a day. The winds were really blowing and it was around 20 outside. When we started there were 6 shanties on the ice, when we left there was one. The day before there were probally around 20 there, guess everyone else knew the fish weren't gonna bite. Well at least I fished the hard water on Erie once, I would love to go back again on some day that it wasn't blowing so hard.  OH almost forgot as soon as the auger got thru to the water the ice was 2 inches under water, seems the ice was lower that the lake wanted it, but sitting on a foot of snow we stayed dry.
Time to find some fish back here in Tioga County.