The more your ice fishing approach mirrors your open-water approach, the more fish you will catch.

If you could distill Dave Genz’s passionate drive to modernize ice fishing, it might come down to getting us to look at ice fishing the same way we do open-water fishing.

Hardly anybody approaches fishing the same in the winter, says Genz, the Minnesota entrepreneur who invented the Fish Trap and the IceBox, and forever changed the way we all fish through the ice. I always try to compare ice fishing to summer fishing. To be successful, your thinking has to be the same at either season.

I see this all the time, especially when I’m answering questions (in the Ice Team booth) at a sports show. I’ll talk to someone, and I can tell he has things figured out in the summertime. Then I’ll show him one of the new Berkley ice rods and he says if they put a spring on the end of it they’d have something, as if the fish bite differently in the winter.

Way beyond questions of spring bobbers and graphite rods, Genz feels that many ice anglers miss out on making better catches because they don’t approach their search for fish the same in the winter as they do in summer. After the ice forms, you still have to take a contour depth map on the lake with you, and search out high-percentage spots as you look for active fish.

You need to be looking for features in the lake, he says, and not just choosing to fish out of one hole. When people are fishing out of a boat in the summertime, you never hear them say they’re going to stay where they are and wait for the fish to come back through! You need to keep moving in the winter, and you always want to be moving shallower or deeper until you find a productive depth. When you find a productive depth, it can be very important to stay in that depth. If you’re catching them in 14 feet and your hole cools off, make sure your next hole is also in 14 feet, and not just another hole you drill at random.

Moving, and drilling new holes, should be thought of as equivalent to moving along and making more casts, or trolling down a section of lake in a boat. It is trolling, says Genz, and your boat control is your next hole. If anything, boat control is easier in the winter, because the wind doesn’t blow you off the spots. But you have to keep thinking as you drill more holes. Understand that fish aren’t just swimming around all the time. A lot of times they’re stationary in specific areas near their food.

In our approach to the search for fish, Genz sees a big mistake repeated often by winter anglers that these same people don’t make during the open-water period. So many times, he says, you hear people talk about their summer fishing, and they run around in their boats, using their electronics, looking not for fish but clouds of baitfish. They understand that when they find food they often find fish, too. But those same people, when they drill a hole through the ice, they don’t want to see those little green lines flickering on their FL-8. Now, they see the cloud of baitfish as nothing but interference, something they want to avoid. They keep drilling holes until they can fish in peace, with a clean screen, so they can see their hook clearly without all that crud on the screen.

In the winter, those little green lines that flicker on your FL-8 are the clouds you see in the summertime. Those flickering green signals mean there’s life down that hole. Without that green flickering interference, the fish aren’t there. They relate to those clouds.

I don’t think food is everywhere in the lake. When you find life down there, and catch a few fish, it’s a good idea to return to that same hole later in the day, or several times a day.

Just don’t get fooled into thinking that the food can’t move, because it can, and does. You have to be constantly searching, and constantly guessing, to consistently find fish.

Genz also feels that ice anglers don’t change their live bait as often as good open-water anglers do.

In the summer, he says, if your leech is not swimming real well, you put a new one on, and the same thing goes for minnows. If the tail of your night crawler gets bit off, you put a new one on. But ice fishermen, especially when they’re fishing with the worm-type baits (Maggies, wax worms, mousies, etc.), they tend to re-position it on their hook rather than put new bait on. Pretty soon they’re fishing with a lifeless, scentless skin. I use fresh live bait, and that’s my scent, and it gives you a lot of added movement, which really triggers strikes.

Note: Dave Genz has a new book out... copies of Bluegills! can be ordered by calling toll-free 1-877-328-0488. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Or send check for $11.95 plus $3 shipping, to: Winter Fishing Systems, 5930 - 16^th Ave. SE, St. Cloud, MN 56304. (Canadian orders: make sure payment is in U.S. funds, and shipping becomes $6.) Recognized as America’s leading ice-fishing authority, Genz is also captain of Ice Team, a new club for ice anglers. Members of Ice Team receive a great membership kit, 4 issues of The Ice Team Report newsletter, and a password to access Ice Team’s private web site chat room. Call 1-800-ICE FISH or check out www.iceteam.com on the web.

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