On seriously large perch fisheries, you can find individual bays -- lake in the lake -- that freeze fast and have advantageous breaks. Those are unrivaled first-ice perch haunts, but not in long supply.

More classically, the "lake in the lake" is a smaller and shallower bay, one without freefalling breaklines.

"This is a minnow thing," said Brosdahl, "and most of the time, a shiner minnow thing. Massive schools of shiners raid the shallows in late fall, after turnover, and they stay through the first part of winter."

And they can be shiners of all creeds and colors, from emeralds to spottails to lake shiners. Point being that the first-ice shiner phenomenon is essentially universal.

Within the bay, shiners and perch gather in greater numbers amid certain features, namely weedbeds, troughs, breaks and bottom-content transitions, such as gravel to sand or sand to rock.

Troughs are a big deal in Brosdahl's world. He likes any unmapped anomaly that attracts fish and he can call his own as he plugs in the GPS coordinates. A trough in a shallow bay often appears as an elongated ditch amidst an otherwise ho-hum flat where depth sinks a couple or three feet and the bottom content alters accordingly, thus getting softer.

So what's all the fuss? Weeds for one. Softer substrates foster greater growth. An example is a trough dug into a sand or gravel flat, which is very common. The surrounding hard flat is bald or scarcely vegetated, whereas the richer trough produces a lush crop of greenery, perhaps coontail or cabbage. Even a spindly clump of weeds will entertain fish when adjacent flats are basically barren.

Virtually any composite set of weeds can hold perch. Autumn is tough on weeds. In most cases, they're brown and down or broken matter by first ice. But in some bays -- and on the main bodies of lakes that don't turn over in the conventional sense -- weeds will persist, thus offering a couple of substantial assets. Weeds provide perch sanctuary from predators. Weeds also provide cover for baitfish. Weeds also harbor crayfish, zooplankton and other snacks. Brosdahl adds to this food-chain menu.

"Perch have a dark side most anglers don't know about," he said. "They eat their own. Big perch eat little perch. Jumbos love snacking on young-of-the-year perch. And weedbeds can be full of perch offspring. There are also baby bluegills and crappies in the weeds -- more perch bait."

And, as luck would have it, most weedbeds are shoreline-oriented, thus offering good early-ice access.

On the downside, early ice isn't easy to deal with. The first coat is always hyper-clear, and it seemingly cracks if you look at it wrong, sending entire food chains scattering across the lake. To help thwart the spook-factor, Brosdahl endorses a program that begins by drilling the heck out of a spot and ending with the StrikeMaster going to bed for the remainder of the day -- hopefully.

"I'll drill up, down and all around the zone, making sure I go shallower and deeper than the target," Brosdahl said. "I do not want to touch the auger again once quiet-time starts."

Not that Brosdahl goes out of his way to make noise during the drilling phase, but when it's time to simmer down and let perch settle back into place -- which they will -- he sneaks from hole to hole, not dragging a sled or slamming a bucket down next to a hole. Once at the hole, it's about getting up and down and not wasting time in dead water. Brosdahl hits the ice pre-rigged for the initial drop, toting a couple of combos with well-crafted presentations.