"If I've marked fish on a spot and know I'm going to catch them there, I'll drill three holes -- two to fish from and one for my underwater camera," Sathre said.

This brings up another critical point when ice-fishing for panfish, especially with a run-and-gun approach. Spring bobbers, traditional bobbers and simply "feeling" the bite are great techniques, but something the underwater camera has taught us is that most panfish bites are never felt by any of these methods.

"When I'm ice-fishing, it's amazing how many fish I can catch simply by watching my Marcum that I'd never feel or see otherwise," Sathre said.

The first thing to consider when choosing a panfish lake is its age. You want a good middle-aged lake that is moderately fertile because it will usually host a tremendous population of one or more of the panfish species.

"If a lake has a good walleye and bass population, it probably also has great crappies, perch or bluegills," Tuma said.

These lakes tend to maintain healthy oxygen levels throughout the wintertime and green weeds are usually easy to find throughout the lake. Green weeds are critical for panfish because it provides cover from predators, food and oxygen. While the weeds will typically hold large numbers of panfish, the larger-sized panfish will be in deeper locations nearby. Tuma said most anglers on these lakes end up fishing too shallow for panfish. In many cases, the bigger fish can be down in water 25 to 30 feet deep.

"The smaller fish are going to be in the weeds, while the bigger ones will be alongside the humps where rocks and weeds are found together, points that go into deeper water and near sharp shoreline breaks into deep water," Tuma said.

Many times these lakes are heavily pressured by other ice-anglers and snowmobile riders, which has an impact on the fish.

"What I've seen on pressured lakes is that the fish that normally sit in the 4- to 12-foot depth range slide out to 20 to 24 feet of water because the above-ice noise is too much of a problem," Tuma said.

The following lakes were selected for this article because they hold tremendous numbers of bluegills, crappies or perch, and they offer good opportunities for big fish -- plus they have hotspots within a relatively close distance of each other.