By Dick Willis

When South Dakotan Larry Baumgarn goes ice-fishing in the heart of the Great Plains, he doesn't just stare at a bobber sitting in the ice hole: He watches the fish come up and suck in the bait.

And he doesn't have to stick his head into the frigid waters near his home in Webster for that up-close view. Fishing in waters not far from the North Dakota state line, he lowers a specially built underwater camera into the frigid depths. The new-fangled device rotates around to the proper angle for him to see fish. Baumgarn looks into a 7-inch screen where he can see everything that's going on near his bait.

All of this is a far cry from the mystery of fishing that has enticed generations of Dakota ice-fishermen for the past century. And few fishermen are using this type of high-tech equipment - yet. But Baumgarn has already learned some things from hours of fish-watching that will help all ice-fishermen, including those who have nothing more complicated than a hole in the ice with a line going down into it.

And there will be plenty of fishermen with just such a setup this winter. Ice-fishing in Dakotas is still expected to be good, say biologists in both North Dakota and South Dakota. Though water levels are lower in some places, lakes and mature fish populations in general are in good shape.

Fishermen can still reap the benefit of a decade or more of relatively wet weather in the Great Plains. The yellow perch, walleye and northern pike fishery is, by its nature, cyclical. The main force in that cycle is the wet weather pattern that filled potholes and natural lakes in the Dakotas during the 1990s and the early part of this decade. Fish and ducks have done well.

"Underwater camera equipment has helped tremendously," said Baumgarn. "You can see how they react to the bait. A lot of times the fish will bite and you can see it before the bobber moves."

It's the delicacy with which the fish take the bait that is of most importance to ice-fishermen. The fish are so gentle in their taking of the bait that most such contacts go undetected by anglers. Baumgarn estimates that more than 90 percent of the fish take the bait and spit it out without the bobber making so much as a quiver. The fisherman hasn't a clue that a fish is even in the vicinity.

"A perch comes up 4 to 6 inches away and looks at it," said Baumgarn. "And the bait is 4 to 6 inches off the bottom. When the fish moves up, it sucks in the minnow and then swims up."

Photo by Ron Sinfelt

Thus, there's no pressure pulling the bobber down. "Your bobber hasn't moved. If it feels the hook, it spits it out, and then the bobber moves. Same with crappies.

"A lot of times they are suspended, but they may be 2 to 4 feet off the bottom. You can set it at different levels in the water. You stop it or lock it and see fish from 360 degrees, because it just keeps rotating. It will tell you what depth your minnow is at."

For fishermen without a camera -and the camera apart, Baumgarn uses no special equipment that other anglers wouldn't have, typically fishing jigs tipped with minnows - this knowledge is still very useful. The fish won't spit out the bait until it feels something is wrong, so it helps to cover the hook as much as possible to help disguise your offering.

A couple of the biggest fans are Baumgarn's kids, with whom he often fishes. They like watching the screen to see the fish bite, and their skills with the camera outfit have gotten so good that they are able to set the hook on a biting fish before there is even the faintest motion on the bobber. In fact, they often don't even watch the bobber; they just watch the camera screen instead.

"Kids love it," said Baumgarn. "My third boy got the hang of that right away. You can tell a perch from a walleye from a northern. If you see a northern coming in, you don't want him to bite 2- to 3-pound line or you'll lose a lot of tackle. So you just move it out of the way."

Indeed, using the underwater camera has increased their ability to detect biting fish - so much so that they often can catch a limit in a very short time. They sometimes head for the lake during halftime of a football game on TV, and are back in time for the third-quarter kickoff with each of them having caught a limit of perch.

The underwater cameras are unquestionably an exciting development in the ice-fishing world. The unit that Baumgarn uses costs about $600, although other models retail for somewhat less. His comes equipped with infrared lights that can be used when it's dark; no extra lighting is needed during daytime. "You can see out 3 to 5 feet, depending on the clarity of the water," he said. "In clear water, 5 to 7 feet vision, or up to 10 if it is really clear."

Baumgarn says that the fish will even come right up to the camera and look at it. "You can jig your bait and then get their attention. With a lot of sunlight, or snow cover, they react differently. You can kind of watch that with your fish. A lot of times if you jig it, for instance, the fish will back up.

Winter is the ideal time to use the camera. Wave action on open water makes it more unsteady and much more difficult to use. But on ice, it has been an educational tool for Baumgarn.

"You learn a lot about fish and how they react," he said. "That is why I like them. Two years ago my son and I won the local fishing tournament - we were the only ones who had a camera, and we were the only ones who limited out on Waubay Lake."

Baumgarn finds the gear effective for the main ice-fishing species in the Dakotas - walleyes, yellow perch and northern pike. "You can see the walleyes cruise in and then go after the bait." Northern pike have an interesting effect: When a northern moves into the area, everything else moves out.

And very interestingly, Baumgarn notes, ice-fishermen have far more fish messing with their bait than they probably know. "Ninety percent of time the fisherman loses the fish and often doesn't even know it," he said. "Ninety percent of the time, the fish takes the bait before the bobber even moves. The old way of fishing, you let them take it 6 to 12 inches and then set the hook. A lot of times they will take it and you'll never even know it.

"Sometimes you have 60 to 70 perch move in, and you don't know it. Now there is no doubt about how many or what kind of fish. And there is no doubt about what bait or lure attracts them. The camera will tell you what they are biting on that day."

Here's a look at where the fishing is likely to be best for a variety of gamesters in both states this month.