“When you add up the pluses of electric augers, you see the advantages pretty quickly,” Baumann said. Along with his son, Kluge believed electric augers ultimately would prevail among anglers over more traditional gas-powered models. Kluge’s father, Jacob, was an ice-auger innovator as early as the 1950s. Though Baumann owns two K-Drill patents, he gives much of the credit for the auger’s design to fellow Minnesota engineer Doug Kluge. The result: A K-Drill tips the scales at only about 10 pounds, a fraction of the weight of some augers. Instead, the K-Drill features an aluminum shaft, steel cutting blades and a plastic conical auger section. Even more innovatively, the K-Drill (the auger part of the unit) isn’t made of steel, as many conventional augers are. Innovatively, the K-Drill relies on a separately purchased ½-inch cordless drill for its powerhead. “The K-Drill will be a disrupter in the auger business,” Baumann said. Now Baumann, who was inducted into the Minnesota Fishing Hall of Fame in 2004 and the national Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in 2012, appears to have hit another home run in the ice fishing game with an auger he calls K-Drill. K-Drill is lightweight, effective and electric: All things that are making its sales high. But its signature product didn’t surface until Vexilar bought rights to a “rotating wheel flasher” sonar unit that was a flop for bass fishing - its intended purpose - but perfect for ice fishing.īaumann and a partner, the late Skip Christman, bought Vexilar in 1986, and in the years since, the company has thrived, despite an onslaught of competition from multiple big names in the fishing sonar business. In time, Vexilar would develop the first liquid crystal display fish finders. While a student in Marshall, Minn., Baumann worked part time for a company that did contract work for Vexilar. But he never fully regained use of his legs. When he was just 3 weeks old, Baumann was bitten by an encephalitis-infected mosquito. A native of southwest Minnesota, where his family farmed, Baumann, 65, cut his angling teeth on Lake Shetek, far from Minnesota’s storied northern lakes country. People who don’t fish, especially those who don’t ice fish, can be forgiven if they haven’t heard of Baumann. Like AWC, Vexilar is located in Bloomington. While many Minnesotans were huddled inside their homes over the holidays, hiding from subzero temperatures, ice fishing guru Steve Baumann had a crew on a frozen Twin Cities lake, boring practice holes with an innovative auger his company, AWC Distributing, makes and markets.īaumann, an engineer, is known nationally and even internationally for the Vexilar sonar units (aka depth finders/fish locators/“flashers’’) manufactured by another company he owns, Vexilar Inc.
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