Pattern this. Pattern that. It’s about us understanding them. Knowing where they’ll be and when, and then giving ‘em what they want. Ice fishing patterns are trickier yet. It’s not like tracing migrations—seasonal and daily—from a boat, watching arcs flow from established shallow structure to pelagic black holes. The trolling motor’s cooking; flasher flashing; GPS plotting; LCD crystallizing, and perhaps a camera spying.

No, through the ice, the art of patterning is more Herculean. More drilling. More foot-slogging. More blood, sweat and tears. Conceivably, more beers, if you’ve earned it.

Information can be a saving grace, though. Knowledge cuts ice, cuts time—visualizing, almost knowing where fish are going to be when you get there.

Dave Genz, ice fishing’s Einstein, patterns bluegills like nobody’s business. I fear his gray matter is composed of a left lobe, right lobe, and instinctual core with bluegill DNA. How else could he know so much about their comings and goings? Gotta be in the genes.

At any rate, Genz knows their routines. Infinite hours cooped up inside a Fish Trap ice shelter gives a guy time to intellectualize about pressing issues like, “Where the heck did the bluegills come from—and go?”

Most recently, Genz has drawn closure to a disjointed bluegill phenomenon that’s intrigued him for quite awhile. It’s been a little like developing a Master’s thesis with scattered but intrinsically linked pieces.

It began with fountains of flickers on the Vexilar. Next—after the Aqua-Vu entered his starting lineup—came the haze of matter pluming from the bottom, obscuring the lake floor and first couple of feet of the water column.

Interesting was the fact that bluegills related to the tumult. Thick red marks appeared in tandem with the flickers and haze. He caught fish in and amongst the clouds. Must be food, he thought. Why else would bluegills leave the sanctuary of the weeds? Nothing motivates life like an appetite.

Genz put it all together. He surmised that the activity on the flasher and camera was waterlife, low-light-loving critters that energize when the sun hits the tops of the trees.

“In the winter, when you fillet a bluegill or crappie you don’t find minnows inside,” says Genz. “And if you do, it’s probably the minnow your partner lost to the same fish an hour ago.

“No, there’s usually just a bunch of gray goo in their crops. Partially digested zooplankton and bloodworms, not baitfish.”

Genz expounds, “Think about it. How often do you see bluegills or crappies chasing around schools of baitfish? When I’m downviewing with the Aqua-Vu, it’s almost never.”

So where’s the pattern? Let’s start in the fern, where big bluegills are made. Live submerged vegetation—be it cabbage, coontail, or milfoil—is pleasing to the wintertime bluegill. Thicker is better, too. So is deeper, and expansive.

Depending on your longitude and clarity of the lake in question, the flora may or may not be booming. Winter…kills. But assuming the weeds are intact or at least a semblance of themselves, Genz suggests fishing it and always maintaining reference to it.