"If we anglers weren't stuck to a vertical jigging presentation through a stationary hole, we wouldn't catch a fish," said Johnson. "When the water is that cold, it requires an extremely precise presentation and a slow approach. You get that with vertical jigging. If we could move the ice off the surface and cast out of our boats, we'd never see a fish due to the water temperature."

Johnson drills a lot of holes in his travels all over the Upper Midwest during the winter months. I twisted his casting arm to get him to name a few of his favorite Minnesota winter hotspots. He loves "researching" these winter honeyholes.

LAKE FLORIDA
Everyone likes to go to Florida when the weather turns cold in Minnesota. For some, that means heading south. For Adam Johnson, that means heading southwest from his home in Brainerd, and even if he doesn't drive too fast he can make it there in a few hours.

The Florida that Johnson goes to in the winter months is a 675-acre lake straight north of Willmar in Kandiyohi County. Johnson goes there for the walleyes.

"Florida has high numbers of walleyes and that makes it easier to find them under the ice," said Johnson. "The lake gets a lot of fishing pressure in the summertime, but the water is clear, and the summer bite for walleyes is such that there are plenty of fish for the ice-angler.

"There's not a lot of midlake structure, so the two humps on the west side get a lot of attention," said Johnson. "I'll go there early in the season, but when that spot gets overpressured I drill a bunch of holes on the southwest corner of the lake in 18 to 25 feet of water. The sonar can pick up any walleyes that are suspending just off the bottom. There are some transition lines where the bottom goes from sand to gravel to rubble. These spots hold walleyes, and they show up on the sonar."

For more information, call Mel's Sport Shop at (320) 796-2421.

CLEAR LAKE
Johnson was shaking his head when he started telling me about Clear Lake on the border of Waseca. I understood his predicament. It's a lake that is too good to tell everyone about, but too good not to spill the beans.

"You never know what you're going to get into on this lake," said Johnson. "In one set of holes you might be pulling in crappies. There are a bunch of them in this lake. In those same crappie holes you can catch walleyes, too. There are lots of walleyes in this lake. The pike and bluegills are there and they can be big. Like the walleyes and crappies coming out of the same holes, that can be the case with pike and sunnies, too. You'll get onto a good school of sunfish, and then the bite stops. You're watching the monitor for the underwater camera and up swims a big old pike. Better grab that jigging rod with the sucker minnow."

Johnson's favorite places on Clear Lake are nowhere in particular.

"It's a shallow lake without much structure, so you just drill a lot of holes and fish the shallows and sonar the deeper water. This lake is full of everything you want to catch in the winter, so it won't take long to find them."

For more information, call Fairibault Bait and Tackle at (507) 334-2768.

BOWSTRING LAKE
"Everyone always heads to Winni for the perch," said Johnson. "That big lake has some big perch, but I've been getting some nice ones on Bowstring as well, and I'm not surrounded by a bunch of other anglers, which is often the case on Winni, even as big as it is."