[spaghetti]

I hope this thread will stay on topic (cold an fun), but you made more and more interesting points.
1- cold. Plastic on the car seat! I was so stupid not to think about this simple solution before, and always flooded my car. Seriously. A shame but that's it.
2- smoothskin: I used to wear them in summer for deeper hunting. But in general I'm a rock crawler and make a mess of smooth neoprene. (it's a problem of us mediterranean spearos: our favourite style will always be "a struscia panza", i-e. "belly crawling", which doesn't gather with smooth suits).
3- freshwater fish. I've been diving in lakes where you can't spearfish at all, and in others where you can shoot every species of fish. In the second ones it's very hard to get close even to pikes (who generally feel very self assured) and to black bass (which are easier where they're protected by no-spear regulations). I'm sure that fishes can learn form experience and share the knowledge in their "community". The only ones who will never learn the lesson are eels, because they blindly rely on their hidings and never try to escape. The only difficulty is to find them because they hide very well indeed. (BTW: no eels in your lake? You never mention them). But I may add one more thing: you (and I mean you: Fondueset) get so close to your Wisconsin fishes not only because they are confident creatures, but also because you're a good diver, skilled, experience and with empathy for the water environment. I don't think that a rude noisy diver could ever take fish pictures like yours.
4-getting close. I partly agree with Mark about a general concept of getting close, but still don't think it's your case. In my country we all tell the young newbies to start spearfishing with short guns (50 to 70centimeters max), so they MUST learn quickly how to get close to the fish. Which means: knowing the behaviour of species, diving with a smooth aquaticity, be silent and unnoticed: these qualities will help in any future spearfishing experience.