Much of what Dave Genz stands for these days is catching fish through the ice in the middle of the day. Midday ice fishing, in most situations, is tougher than prime time early and late when light is low and fish tend to be more active.

Right in the middle of a middle-of-the-day outing, Dave sat in a two-person Fish Trap and answered questions about the details - the little things that help him succeed. It kept him fishing out of one hole a lot longer than he normally would, but he likes to talk fishing, so he didn’t seem to mind.

Q: There are a lot of people out here fishing today, but you can sense their reliance on other people. They seem to crowd together, as if there’s magic in being in this one place, as if it’s the one spot on the whole lake that has fish...

Genz: That seems to be one of the hardest things to get people to do, is strike out on their own. I don’t know if people are worried that they’re going to look stupid if they drill holes in a spot that other fishermen don’t consider a good spot, or what. But the mindset is probably one of the most important things you need to change if you’re going to be successful on the ice.

We need to think when we’re out here, and not be satisfied with knowing that this is a good spot; they always catch fish here; this worked last week, or whatever. The mindset of many ice fishermen is to go try the standard spots for a while, and if they don’t catch much, they go in and tell everybody the fish weren’t biting. I still don’t think enough people realize how many holes you have to drill to consistently catch fish. As soon as I say that, I know a lot of people accuse me of being too much go, go, go, and that it seems like I’m making too much work out of ice fishing. Some of that may be true, but I keep coming back to the fact that when you have the right equipment, ice fishing becomes an active sport that is really fun. When you have that Lazer auger, drilling a lot of holes is easy. I know people are struggling to drill holes with older augers. Just one experience with a Lazer would convince them. To catch fish in the winter time, sometimes just moving a few feet can make all the difference, and to do that, you have to drill a lot of holes.

Q: As we look out the window, there are a lot of folks just standing around talking, drinking coffee, stuff like that. What are they waiting for?

Genz: That’s another one of the great traditions of ice fishing, waiting around for the evening bite. At prime time, when the sun is going down, the fish will catch you, and even if you’re using outdated equipment, you’ll still catch fish. But with that old stuff, it’s tough to score in the middle of the day, and so both of those factors keep the old ways of doing things from changing.

We’ve proven that you can catch a lot of fish in the daytime, if you change your way of doing things, if you upgrade your equipment. I could see the reluctance better if it was really expensive to equip yourself, but you can have everything I have for so little it would amaze you!

Q: Okay, so let’s talk about the little things you do that help you catch fish in the middle of the day.

Genz: Even if you have all the latest equipment, including an (Vexilar) FL-8 (depthfinder), you have to be willing to do things differently than you did before. When fish are not down there, you can’t say they aren’t biting. You have to move and look for fish. You need to think about where the fish might be if you don’t find them right away. What’s different from last week or last year? Are there any fish left on this spot? Did fishing pressure get them? You can’t believe how many fish can go home in buckets, even after just a few weeks. A lot of the fish can get caught off the best early spots, if they’re heavily fished. Every fish in the lake doesn’t end up in one spot when the ice forms. You have to decide that it’s OK not to do what everybody else is doing.

People are still amazed when they see us out on the ice, at how light we’re dressed. They say you’ll freeze. But we’re almost never cold. If you’re moving, drilling holes, fishing hard, thinking, you don’t get cold. Ice fishing, when it’s done right, is an active sport. It may not be cross-country skiing, but even just keeping your mind working seems to help keep you warm.

One thing I learned to do is wear a set of Gore-Tex raingear as my outer layer. It keeps the wind out and you don’t get wet, and that’s a lot of the battle right there. I would compare the way we dress now to the way I see people dressing for winter hiking, and the way upland bird hunters dress. It’s deer hunters who have to bundle up, because they’re sitting in one place.

The modern ice angler doesn’t sit in one place long enough to get cold.

Q: You pay attention to many other little things when it comes to presentation, too. In your words, what are the keys to getting fish to bite once you locate them?

Genz: That’s right, you do have to pay attention to the little things, in the winter more than any other time of year. A lot of people don’t realize that the water is as clear as it ever gets in the winter, because ice cover doesn’t allow wind to mix the water. There are still currents, and there are dirty-water lakes, but an awful lot of sediment settles onto the bottom, giving the fish a better look at your lure than at any other time of year.

I’ve had people say that I’m too much of a stickler for all these fine points, like having the best rod I can get, and fresh line, and fresh bait, and a lure that swims naturally. But I keep coming back to the fact that most fish are less active in winter than summer, and even when they feed, they might not bite as aggressively. I want all the advantage I can get when it comes to enticing bites in the first place, and then detecting them so I can set the hook.

You need fresh line. You absolutely have to change your line every year, on every ice-fishing reel. Fresh line hangs straight, it doesn’t have coils and kinks in it assuming it’s the right line for the lure. You have to use line that’s light enough to allow whatever lure you’re using to hang straight down. This is most important with the smallest lures, but you see a lot of cases where people are trying to fish with line that’s old, and a lure that isn’t heavy enough to keep the line straight. If you have kinks in your line, it’s almost impossible to detect light bites before the fish spits the bait back out.

And, you have to have fresh bait. I’ve seen even good ice fishermen, who have been fishing with me for years, take a long time to learn this lesson. Your goal is to catch fish, not to see how many fish you can catch on one worm. Make sure you have fresh bait every time you go fishing, and that you fish with fresh bait.

A lot of times, you see fish come into your hole, and they approach your bait, but don’t bite. It’s amazing what happens if you reel up, put on fresh bait, and drop back down. The change in attitude of the fish can be dramatic. A lot of times, they’ll bite immediately, because the fresh bait is giving off more scent, and the flavor is right if the fish should sample it, the way they do. Actually, scent is flavor, in my mind. Flavor is more like taste. I want the fish to taste it.

If they just come up and smell my bait, I don’t get a hook into them. A minnow head hanging down there for a half-hour doesn’t have any flavor left. When you put a fresh minnow head on a Dart, or fresh maggies on a Genz Worm, you get a bite right away a lot of times. You have to learn to fish with fresh bait. I wish I was perfect at that myself.

Again, we’re not talking about prime time now. There are times of the day when the fish will catch you, but most of the time you have to catch the fish, and that’s when the little things make a big difference.

Q: And when you catch a fish, how do you make the most of the situation?

Genz: You want to get your lure back down there hopefully with fresh bait on it as quick as you can. A lot of times you actually see one fish on your hook and another one chasing it. When one fish is eating, it can spur the others around it to eat. And fish sometimes turn on for a short period for no apparent reason. You might bang three fish in a row, and then they become hard to catch again. So when you do have some success, don’t be lazy about getting your hook back down there.

Practice at this. You should always have your bait handy. When it’s cold, you can’t leave the bait sitting out or it will freeze. But try to keep it in a pocket that’s easy to access, and try to be good enough at putting on new bait that it just takes a few seconds. That way, you can put on fresh bait and drop it back down when the action gets hot.

And now, I think we should move. We haven’t caught anything the whole time we’ve been talking.