ELECTRONICS HELP IN ICE FISHING.

Byline: John Husar Chicago Tribune 

It took about an hour to get the feel of Lake Mendota's ultralight-hitting perch and then the fish began coming in.

Not in limits of 50 in an hour, as arm-sore guide Kevin Monk occasionally experiences. In our case, it was more like 22 in a few hours on a supposedly slow day - enough to learn Monk's electronic ``Star Wars'' ice-fishing technique.

The method works so well - especially in Mendota's deep perch waters - that Monk has strained a rotator cuff setting hooks into fish.

We were playing the game Cadillac-style, within a heated, mobile rental ``ice shanty'' that easily accommodates eight anglers. A dozen holes had been drilled in a line between facing rows of benches. Parkas, hats and gloves were piled beside us despite an outside temperature no warmer than 10 degrees.

We luxuriously stretched our legs in the enclosure shaped like a miniature double-wide trailer, swapped jokes, sipped pop and studied a pair of Vexilar electronic sonar flasher units that accurately enabled us to jig our tiny lures right to any fish through an immense column of 74 feet of water.

We were on the perch beds a mile off Mendota's Governor's Island, maybe two and a half miles from picturesque University of Wisconsin.

Gene Dellinger, the bushily mustachioed proprietor of the D&S Bait & Tackle shop that specializes in ice-shanty rentals, has a team of guides who scout perch movement and position his homemade shanties over hot spots. They drill the holes, ignite a propane heater and fire up a generator if electricity is needed for lights, circulating fans or a portable television.

For a $100 minimum or $30 per person, clients can be dropped off with their own bait and fishing gear to be retrieved at an appointed hour. For another $100, they can be provided with a full-service teaching guide, complete with rigged rods and electronics.

``I think a family could have a ball out here with only a bunch of ice fishermen around,'' he said, mindful that Lake Mendota is a far cry from the notorious ice village that winters on Minnesota's Mille Lacs, complete with street signs, vendors and occasional hookers on snowmobiles.

Our recent visit came amid the coldest snap of the year, when high barometric pressure had turned off fish for as long as a week.

In his seven years of guiding for Dellinger, Monk has perfected a method of electronically reading all that takes place in the water beneath a shanty.

The method is deceptively simple and easy to learn. A half-ounce metal weight - Monk uses homemade coat hangers attached to an aluminum disk, while Dellinger sells copper tubes - is connected by two-way swivels from a 4-pound-test line to a 4-pound monofilament leader, tipped with a No. 12 or 14 Ratfinkie ice jig. A pair of tough-skinned live grubs called ``spikes'' are hung upon the hook to attract perch, which feed in the winter on massive suspended populations of daphnia, or water lice, that hatch in the bottom mud.

The rigs are dropped through ice holes from 36-inch ultramicro fiberglass rods with ultralight spinning reels; the metal weights can be seen on sonar units as they are reeled up and down through the water. It's sort of like playing a video game, with the reward an actual fish.

``Even when they're hitting good, they bite light,'' Monk said. ``You ordinarily never feel the bite. The hard part is teaching a new guy how to notice a strike. You have to see it on the rod tip. And then you have to set the hook immediately. And you have to set it hard because of the tremendous line stretch when you are fishing this deep.''