By BRUCE A. SCRUTON

bscruton@njherald.com

SWARTSWOOD LAKE -- It was a quiet morning as the sun came up.

"Dead calm," said Scott Cooper. "A beautiful day."

It didn't matter that the thermometer read minus-1 degree. There was 10 inches of ice on the lake and Cooper was going fishing.

Pulling a plastic toboggan across the ice, he headed for his favorite spot, the northwest corner of Swartswood Lake along the edge of what, in summertime, is a large field of aquatic plants poking their leaves above the water line.

In winter, however, the plants have died and all that can be seen on the surface of the lake is covered, wind-rippled snow.

"I use my fish finder and drill holes to find where the weeds stop. Then I fish just out from that," Cooper said of his strategy in finding fish.

Cooper, who fishes just about every weekend that it's legal, said he also uses the fish finder for its original purpose.

"I was jigging this morning with the bait almost on the bottom when I saw on the (fish finder's) scope that a big one was up near the surface," he said. "I just pulled the bait up and he took it."

Cooper usually doesn't keep the fish he catches, choosing instead to take a quick picture followed by a quick release back into the chilly water.

Unlike summer, where a line can be cast in almost any direction from a boat, ice fishing's limit is what you can do through a 10-inch diameter hole. By using live, swimming bait, the underwater range is somewhat bigger, but techniques like trolling definitely are out.

That leaves just two ways of fishing through a hole in the ice -- jigging and using a tip-up.

Jigging is similar to regular fishing with a hook, line and a short pole held by the angler.

State law allows ice anglers to have five lines in the water -- one for jigging and four static lines known as tip-ups

A tip-up rig uses a hook and line, but the line is attached to a frame that is wider than the hole and has a spring-loaded flag. When a fish strikes the bait, the spring's hook is released and the "tip" of the spring sends a flag "up."

Some people go to elaborate ends to create animated tip-ups, some of which even include sound.

As Cooper talked and fished, the far-off growl of gasoline-powered engines could be heard from all along the shoreline of the lake. Despite a noontime temperature hovering around 20 degrees, there were dozens of people gathered in little clans in coves and just off points of land around the lake.

At nearby Little Swartswood Lake in Stillwater and White Lake in Blairstown, parking lots also were full.

Cooper, a diehard fisherman since he was a boy, said this has been the best winter of the past several.

"Last year, maybe just a couple of weekends was safe ice," he said. "The year before, almost no ice, so this is great."

He explained his love of fishing as "experimentation, trying different things. To me, it's trying to solve the puzzle of finding the fish."

Most important, he said, fishing is a stress-reliever.

"If I don't fish on a weekend, I'll have a meltdown by Monday afternoon. One day of fishing, I'll last until Wednesday," he said. "Both days, I'm good for the whole week."

While Cooper had been on the lake since just after 7 a.m. -- and planned to stay until sunset -- his wife, Debbie, didn't show up until just after noon.

She also learned to fish from her father. After she and Scott were married -- their honeymoon was two weeks of striped bass fishing on Cape Cod -- he taught her how to dress for warmth on the ice. She now likes ice fishing better.

"Yeah, when I want to leave, I just walk across the water," she laughed. "And the car has a heater."

During the course of the early afternoon, the flag on the rig furthest from where Scott and Debbie were standing went up four times.

The first three times, Scott hauled in the line hand-over-hand with no success. One fish wriggled off just at the hole while the other two strikes, the fish, probably a perch, spit out the bait and was never hooked.

The fourth time, he hauled in a 14-inch pickerel. After using a device to keep the fish's mouth open, avoiding razor-sharp teeth, and pliers to dislodge the hook, Cooper lowered the fish back through the hole and off it swam.

Nearby, another angler was using a gas-engine powered auger to quickly drill holes in the ice.

"Variety," said Modris Klima when asked why he was drilling nearly a dozen holes. "I'll eventually work all of them, I guess."

Klima lives in Stockton on the Delaware River in southern Hunterdon County.

Asked why he comes all the way to Swartswood Lake to fish, he smiled and said simply: "You got ice up here."