Ken “Husker” O’Malley using a power auger to drill one of multiple holes before ice fishing on Shabbona Lake.

SHABBONA, Ill. — I was impressed by a guy hand-augering Sunday at Shabbona Lake State Park.

Mind you, he was doing it through a foot of ice with snow on top.

That launched Ken ‘‘Husker’’ O’Malley into the memory of starting to ice-fish with his father, who died on St. Patrick’s Day in 2020, with basic hand augers and a couple of ice rods.

Memories are great, but reality is better. O’Malley used his power auger to drill 10 holes in a couple of minutes.

‘‘Smartest thing I ever bought,’’ he said. ‘‘Don’t have to smell gas or mess with any of that.’’

O’Malley had a theory about fishing the cribs and brush piles.

‘‘Everybody’s hitting the deep trees,’’ he said. ‘‘Word gets out, and that’s where everybody runs to.’’

The deep trees looked like a small tent city.

But O’Malley’s holes didn’t do much at first, and we watched fish rise on our flashers, then fade away.

His idea eventually paid off when he went back-to-back on with a good crappie and bluegill. It started a flurry in which even I caught some good fish, and we had a couple of doubles.

O’Malley used tungsten jigs with Jester tails, a new ice-fishing plastic from C&N Custom Baits, a bait he just received last week. The bait, which looks like a minuscule octopus, worked better than the tungsten jig and maggots or mousies I used. (Though O’Malley being the better ice angler probably mattered more.)

‘‘It’s definitely a good bluegill bait, but we did get some crappie on it [Saturday] and some small bass, too,’’ he said. ‘‘So it’s a multispecies bait, like a lot of plastics.’’

The keepers from a day of ice fishing at Shabbona Lake.

After the flurry of action passed, we kept picking off good crappie and bluegills.

As O’Malley put it: ‘‘Not a numbers day but definitely a quality day.’’

Out of 20 fish, we caught three keeper crappie — the best going 10œ inches — and nine keeper bluegills.

O’Malley said the afternoon bite has been better in recent weeks, so he does stuff in the mornings and fishes in the afternoons.

‘‘I made pancakes for [his wife and son] the other day,’’ he said.

It was the kind of day where, with sun breaking through, we fished outside without a shelter. Late in the afternoon, the wind at our backs finally got me.

‘‘Now that it’s [staying] light later, I can fish after work, too,’’ O’Malley said.

As I drove out, kids in bright snowsuits sledded down the hill by the launch.

In February, the park is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

This Super Bowl matchup is like catching freshwater drum while fishing for smallmouth bass.