Have you ever been on a lake and fished it for hours sometimes even days before you figured out what the (magic) pattern was. I know I have, and it took me few years to figure out something else. Whenever I get to a new lake I try to establish as fast as I can if the fish are on a pattern. I start shallow and fast and then get deeper and slower with my presentation until I contact enough fish for it to be considered a pattern. A bunch of years ago I was fishing a lake and figured out a peculiar pattern and after awhile I decided to fish a different lake. This lake was pretty similar to the one I was on and instead of going through my normal logical fish finding practice I tried this unusal pattern on the new lake and bam I was on the fish. I tried different patterns with no success and every time I came back to what I was doing originally it was really working. Over a weeks time i tried this on a few different lakes and the pattern was transferable to a bunch of similar lakes. This was pretty eye opening to me and over the past couple of decades this scenario has repeated itself many times with many different presentations. The point im trying to make with this is if you find something really working in a area on one lake, if you go to a new lake that has some of those same characteristics try whats been working there also, you will be surprised how many times that exact same pattern will work at the new lake. p.s. There's a pattern for ice fishing that can litterally help you rule out dozens of lakes in an area and find the best one or two without even having to go to the lakes, but for the life of me I cant remember it at the moment :-)