Hope your on the mend Byron!

I didn't do this and learned the hard way.  Get a keel protector of some sort, protect your investment.  This is a simple thing to do to your rig, and fairly cheap.  If i did it right of the bat, I wouldn't have had to mess around with the repair.

Kevin Skovenski, I'm sure he would.. He's closer than the both of us at the moment, doesn't have far to go at all!

It's great learning new things.  That's a great way to set up a spinning rod.  So much different then using straight mono!!

Kevin Skovenski, I got that covered!  I sense a road trip a few hours north will be in the works!

Nice.. there will be a difference for sure!  When I first started using braid, the first thing I noticed was my knot that my dad taught me to tie when I was growing up ( I guess they call it the fisherman's knot and I think they also call it the Berkley knot too ) it was great using mono... didn't work for braid!  For me I found it would slip.  Found out the hard way :)

My go to for braid is the Palomar knot.  It's a great knot and easy to learn.  I do some others but that's a great knot to do with braid!

Kevin Skovenski... Only one way to find out!  I'm sure there is something to be caught in those lakes.

Kinda of funny you mentioned this. Never iced fish this lake, so i didn't know if it was springy in spots or not, one of the holes i drilled it was about 2" so backed away from that!! Id say the next set of holes averaged 5" or 6". Did have a honeycomb layer to it. Wasn't nice and solid.

It was one of the lakes around the Oxford area.

Neat!!  looks like something that could be in a Jurassic Park movie!