District 3 lies directly below District 2 and includes Allen, De Kalb and Noble counties and the northern third of Kosciusko County.

District 4, five counties wide and four counties deep, is made up of 14 counties immediately south of District 3. It includes the southern two-thirds of Kosciusko County.

District 5 contains 20 counties of a wide swath that stretches from the border of Ohio to that of Illinois. It is immediately south of districts 1 and 4. Thus, it offers some ice-fishing in times of extreme cold.

To learn more about the ice-fishing potential of the various fish management districts this year, I went to Jeremy Price, assistant fisheries biologist of District 1; Neil Ledet, fisheries biologist for District 2; Jed Pearson, fisheries biologist for District 3; Ed Braun, fisheries biologist for District 4, and Rhett Wisener, fisheries biologist for District 5.

Jeremy Price has studied the standing waters of District 1 for many years with district biologist Bob Robertson, and both men wave the wand of excellence over the Plymouth lakes chain.

This chain, situated about five miles south and slightly west of Plymouth in Marshall County, is made up of four, five or six lakes, depending upon how one views the terrain. Totally, the lakes offer slightly more than 400 acres of ice for hardwater anglers.

This chain of natural lakes is situated west of U.S. Route 31 and east of state Route (SR) 17. It is an east-west chain, starting with Lawrence Lake (69 acres) and running westward through Myers Lake (96 acres), Cook Lake (84 acres) and Mill Pond, (168 acres, including Kreigbaum Lake). A fifth lake, Holem, is considered part of Myers, somewhat like Mill Pond and Kreigbaum are thought of as one lake by some, and as individual lakes by others.

Price says bluegills are by far the dominant species of the Plymouth Lakes, noting that 'gills of 8 to 9 inches are taken consistently by both open-water and ice anglers.

However, Price adds that redear sunfish are the second-best species in the chain, and that 10-inchers are fairly common. Studies of the chain indicate crappies and yellow (ring) perch are about the same in numbers as third/fourth most-numerous species. Largemouth bass and northern pike are next in that order. Bass have run small in recent creel surveys, but Price believes the lakes may host good numbers of legal-sized bass (14 inches) now.

Price points out that among ice-anglers Lawrence and Myers probably are the most popular lakes of the chain, but he thinks any of the lakes that are connected by culverts or inlet/outlets could produce good fishing for any of the species of the chain.

Public access sites with parking lots are found at the east and west ends of the chain. The site on Lawrence Lake may be accessed from Oliver Road, about 2.5 miles south of Plymouth, and the site on Mill Pond is on county Road 12, about one-fourth mile east of SR 17.

Crooked Lake, 800-plus acres some five miles northwest of Angola, gets Neil Ledet's nod as one of the best -- if not the best -- lakes of District 2 for ice-fishing. Crooked Lake offers three basins and good populations of walleyes and bluegills. Both species have good numbers of followers among hardwater anglers.