Doug and I fished St. Clair lk this morning and I heard my first Redwinged Blackbird. I had been told by Tom of “Tom’s bait” fame, that the fish were hitting hard off the cedars, across from the launch site.
We’d hoped that someone had plowed out the launch site, ’cause it’s a bit of a walk from the truck to the fishing site, and it’s an all up-hill walk back. Luckely it was cold, and we were able to walk across the two feet of snow rather than through it. It was supposed to get to 40º today and I wasn’t looking forward to the return trek, but that turned out to be not a problem. We followed what few foot prints there were down the hill, but there were very few leading to the cedars, and I began to wonder about “Tom’s bait” and his intelligence resources. Doug and I (mostly Doug) poked 10 or 15 holes in 24″ of white ice, and sent the camera down to see if anything was there.
These underwater cameras are about the best thing to enter the market since Mr. Dupont started selling dynamite. Sonar will tell you there are fish there, but it won’t tell you what type or how many. The best case scenario would be to have a sonar until along to first find them, then use the camera but mine was out of batteries. You get a real close up view of the ice wall as the unit sinks below the water line and then another line when it clears the ice. When we lowered the camera down on Lake Charlevoix we could see clear blue ice until just water, but here, things are a little murkier and the ice is white.
Blue ice is 99% water, white ice is 98% air. That’s not exactly the correct numbers but it gives you an idea of how dangerous white ice is. Even though the stuff is 24″ thick, within four full days of 32º+ temperatures, it’s open water. The ice on Lake Charlevoix will still be usable after this crap is open water.
So, after slowly lowering the unit down, I could see the bottom coming up and brought it to a halt, just up off the bottom. Twirling the cable, I spun the unit in a 360º turn and watched what went by. After seeing nothing there, I moved it back up slowly as I spun it, and didn’t see a fish. After putting the camera away, I grabbed the augger and dug a couple more holes and started fishing. Doug was using the camera at another group of holes and I started getting bites in mine. I never did look here with the camera so I guess I found it the old fashioned way and called Doug over. I moved the portable shanty over and auggered two more holes for Doug. One hole was for his line and the other for the camera. The camera ends up being very close to Dougs and another four feet to mine, but both show up quite well.
With the camera in place, we both lowered our baits down and started to watch the happiness begin. The one important thing about using a camera is it’ll catch you more fish. Many times we’ve watched bluegill and perch suck in a bait and yet there isn’t any movement on the poles’ sensors. We use a long thin sliver of metal to show when even the lightest of bites occures, and they didn’t move. As we’d watch the grub or larva disappear, we’d set the hook and bring up a fish, but not this time.
This time we watched them stare at the bait and then find somewhere else to be. We tried different tactics and an assortment of motions or combinations of motions to see how’d they react. I was using a shiner and it was doing a good job of getting them over there, even if it was to just bring them over to Doug’s wax worm. The water clairity was something out of a “B” movie and sometimes I wasn’t quite sure what that was back beyond the murk. Some of them would bump the camera as it came in from behind and suddenly blot out the entire screen of the monitor. All we’d see for a second or two would be fish scales, but the camera would spin and watch the full lenth of the fish as it swam away. I’ve only seen one Pike do that, and one time I saw the insides of another one as it tried to swollow the camera. This time though, it was perch and bluegills and one crappie. That’s why I was still using minnows when the next picture was taken.
Four other people came out while we were there and none of them fished for more than 20 minutes. We were there for 3 hours. If we hadn’t had the camera, we would have been out there longer than 20 minutes, but only by 10 more. Doug caught one keeper of 8″ and I caught one, “Aquarium” quality, but I got to watch him eat it. If there was ever a way to get someone interested in fishing, this unit is it.
