Adam Johnson Outdoors • Reading Outdoors

Down Viewing Refined

By Mark Strand

It's become all the rage, this Down Viewing thing.

You take your Aqua-Vu camera, arrange the cable so it looks straight down, fasten it using a tie-wrap, and lower it down the same hole you're fishing out of. You still use the Vexilar, too; in fact, in deeper water it's easy to see how deep the camera is because it shows up on the flasher. Stop it just above the jig and you're watching the action.

Down Viewing, developed by ice-fishing pioneer Dave Genz, has allowed the Aqua-Vu to become a serious tool for the highly mobile ice angler. From the day it was invented, the underwater camera was a great asset to those who planned on setting up at a promising spot and waiting for fish to come through. But for anybody who "makes a lot of casts" in the course of a day on the ice (one of Genz's pet phrases), the camera was seeing limited playing time until a couple years ago.

Since the day he started Down Viewing, Dave has been learning all the amazing things the technique can teach an ice angler. "It lets you sight-fish at any depth," he says. "One of the greatest things is it lets you study how your lure actually responds to different jigging motions. Depending on depth, how much stretch you have in your line, and what rod you're using, the amount of motion you create in the lure is affected. Sometimes, in deeper water, with mono, you'd be amazed at how little the lure moves with a pretty major rod movement.

"This is something you should learn as much about as possible. Triggering fish that come up to investigate your bait is a skill you can work at. But a lot of people are just out there jigging away, without knowing what their rod movements are doing to the lure."

Another lesson that Genz had reinforced through his Down Viewing sessions is that "sometimes, the small fish and the big fish are together in the same area," he says. "I remember one time in particular, where there were a lot of small crappies a foot or two off the bottom. You could catch them one after another, as many as you wanted.

"But just inches off the bottom were these big bluegills. It was hard to target these fish, because the small crappies would come up and grab your bait as soon as it got near them. You had to get the bait right down on the bottom, or just off it, to interest the big bluegills. I was able to drop down and catch those 'gills, though."

An important rigging refinement Genz has gone through is to take pains to make sure the camera hangs straight down. This has the same level of importance as leveling the Vexilar's transducer in the hole.

"When you hang the camera just a couple feet above the lure," explains Genz, "you don't want it to hang at a slight angle. The jig is, basically, hanging directly beneath the camera. But if the camera is at even a slight angle, the jig might be off the screen, or way to the edge."

When you look at your lure (and the fishing scene around it), you're seeing basically a 1:1 ratio. In other words, when the camera is one foot away from the lure, you see the lure within an area about 1 foot by 1 foot. In other words, the distance represented from one side of the camera's monitor to the other would be about 1 foot.

Let's compare it to the 'cone angle' concept you're probably familiar with from sonar use. If the camera is two feet from the lure, the camera 'sees' in a cone about 2 feet in diameter. The screen is actually rectangular, but you get the idea.

"So many times," says Genz, "I only have the camera about 2-4 feet above my hook, so you can see how important it is to have the camera hanging straight down. I set the camera depth at whatever it takes to clearly see my lure."

By understanding this, you quickly realize how truly close the fish has to come before you see it. In most cases, you'll detect the presence of the fish on the Vexilar first, serving as your early-warning system that you should be closely monitoring the camera for the telltale nose and pectoral fins.

"That lets you start refining your presentation even before the fish shows up on the Aqua-Vu," says Dave. "It can also be that critical time when you remind yourself to keep doing whatever it was that brought the fish to you in the first place. So many people stop moving their bait when a fish comes up to it, and that's the main reason fish come up but don't bite."

Another lesson that Down Viewing has reinforced in Genz is that, no matter how close the fish comes to your lure, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was even interested.

"Sometimes," he says, "the fish is not coming up to look at your lure at all. Some of them are just passing through. They come swimming through your hole, but they just happened to have taken a path that puts them near the bait. They don't even look over at it. By seeing that on the camera, you can feel comfortable that you didn't do something that caused the fish to reject the bait.

"The more I use the Vexilar and the Aqua-Vu together, the more valuable they are to me as complimentary tools. One thing is for sure: the camera has gone from being a toy to being a tool, to now being a weapon."

Note: Custom brackets that allow an Aqua-Vu to rest securely on the seat assembly of a Fish Trap have been developed by Clam Corporation. They are available at www.clamcorp.com. They require no drilling to install; simply take out two screws and replace them with the slightly longer screws provided, and the bracket is in place.

Dave Genz's latest book, 'Bluegills!' can be ordered by calling toll-free 1-877-328-0488.