I learned ice fishing from old guys. I was a teen, and the old guys were in their 20s, maybe 30s. These guys, when they were younger, must have learned the trade from equally old guys of their time.

Back then, when my mentors were old and I was young, there were no personal sonars that told you the fish had arrived. Back then, ice-fishing rods were made of steel (gosh, were they cold to hold!) and “ice reels” didn’t turn by handles – only a nubby knob on an open spool.

Heck, back then there were no vending machines that sold ice-fishing bait, so if you wanted grubs at 5 a.m., you had better have them in your wood shed or have visited “Johnny’s Bait” the night before.

Yes, sure, times have changed, but here’s the thing: The fish haven’t. Not to get all evolutionary on you, but fish haven’t changed in thousands (maybe millions) of years, and what caught them under the ice way back when I was a kid still catches fish now.

I’m not suggesting we give back our sonars. What I’m saying is that it’s fun to think about, and sometimes incorporate, some of the old tricks into the modern game.

Before there was LL Bean or Cabela’s, or any of mega outdoor stores, there was Herter’s, a mail-order business. Herter’s was run by George Herter, a consummate, old-fashioned outdoorsman and outdoor writer. He wrote a ton of really crazy books filled with tips and techniques that may or may not have worked.

One of his professed ice-fishing tricks was to lower a glass jar filled with minnows to the bottom of the lake. Herter insisted the aquarium-like minnow jar attracted game fish, which he then caught profusely.

I have never connected a glass jar to a rope and lowered it under the ice, but I have seen a variation on the theme.

One of the old guys from my younger years took a screen minnow trap – the conical kind – and lowered that down. This guy was a great ice panfisherman, and I have to believe his trapped minnows brought many fish to his holes.

I tried it once, it worked, but the trap was too bulky to carry on a sled so I dropped the idea. Then I made a small-mesh screen trap about the size of jewelry box, put a door on the top, filled it with fathead minnows, then lowered the contraption on a rope to the bottom. For perch fishing, it worked remarkably well the couple of times I used it, but then it was forgotten about with the onslaught of new stuff. Frankly, I have to find that thing somewhere in the shed or make another one.

Talking about bait, here’s an old trick that is useful. Have you ever taken a minnow from your insulated bait bucket, placed it on a hook, and dropped it into the water, only to have the minnow look like it just came out of cryogenic tube? The minnow acts so sluggish it wouldn’t attract a hungry sea gull. Some shocked minnows croak pretty quickly.

To combat this, when you arrive on the ice, start adding small amounts of snow or the lake’s cold water to your bucket. A little at a time, mind you. This will start to drop the bucket temperature and acclimate the minnows to the lake’s water temperature. Do it slowly – a handful of snow or a ladle of cold lake water at a time.

On days I know there won’t be a cloud in the sky and I’ll be fishing till noon and beyond, I bring a couple of roofing shingles with me. I don’t remember where I picked this up, or if I invented it myself, but a shingle cover helps keep the water beneath your drilled hole dark.

You’ll need to cut a wide enough slit in the shingle – about the width of a finger – to let the line pass through, and when you get a strike, pull the shingle away. I generally use this old trick when jigging for trout or when using a tip-up for bass. For pecking panfish, it’s often too much bother, then again … Cut the shingles to slightly larger than ice-hole size and make the slit halfway across the diameter. I heard of a guy who keeps his ice hole slushy to accomplish the same thing.

Slowly toss shattered egg shells (confetti size) into your ice hole to attract fish. A little at a time does it. There’s a guy who sprays glitter on his egg shells, and I’ve seen him catch panfish when others weren’t.