GREAT OUTDOORS: Underwater cameras provide many ice fishing discoveries

With ice formation underway, I am looking forward to using my underwater camera. Whenever the lake is clear enough to see more than a couple of feet, it makes ice fishing more educational, productive and fun. I have seen a lake sturgeon cruise by off the west shore of South Bass Island, a sea lamprey hitchhiking on a carp in the Put-in-Bay Harbor and small muskie there, too. Although zebra mussels caused Lake Erie to dramatically clear up, muddy discharges from rivers often reduce a camera's effectiveness. In local harbors, marinas, ponds or clearer bodies of water elsewhere, cameras can be used more often. Although the use of fish finders to mark incoming fish dramatically improves an angler's catch rate, they cannot determine species or make the fish bite. Cameras, however, can explain why many "marks" on the fish finder do not lead to bites, such as species of fish with no interest in the bait being offered due to their prey preferences. These may include "vegetarian" fish or ones with small mouths that cannot handle large lures such as gizzard shad, smelt, silver chubs, various shiner minnows, lake whitefish or quillbacks (carpsuckers). Others, such as freshwater drum, are more active during the warmer weather months, yet occasionally are seen swimming by. Sometimes target fish are just not in the mood to feed. I have often seen walleyes come to a lure and just stare at it before swimming away or halfheartedly peck at the sinker or inhale and spit out the bait before swimming away. Once, while chatting with a couple of friends near Rattlesnake Island who were using an underwater camera in their shanty, a walleye swam up to one of the lures and engulfed it but did not swim away. With the lure clearly in its mouth, I urged the appropriate angler to "set the hook" even before the bite was felt through his rod in hand. This walleye had a Michigan Division of Wildlife jaw tag attached. After being turned in with the location and length, the agency shared where it was originally caught and its length when tagged two years earlier. Yellow perch also frequently inhale baits while remaining stationary, but by seeing this happening in real time, they can often be hooked before the detection of the bite travels up the line to flex the rod tip. When watching lures or baits, the reactions of incoming fish pinpoint what type of action triggers them to strike. I learned that sometimes when perch are reluctant to bite on a frisky shiner, they will inhale a dead minnow or pieces off the bottom without hesitation. This led to my technique of using cut, smashed minnows purposely rigged to lay on the bottom, while providing fresh, intact baits above them. Sometimes when the line began jumping around a little, the camera revealed the source of the action was rainbow smelt pecking at the swivels. Another time, while fishing in the Put-in-Bay Harbor, there was a small white perch that was hanging around my shiner-baited hooks all day just pecking at them. I tried a variety of techniques to try to hook it — not because I wanted to have it for dinner, but just because it was the only available fish within sight. I tried different lures, smaller shiners, pieces of bait, slow lifts, laying it on bottom — you name it. When sunset arrived and it was time to go home, it was still there. The next morning, it returned as the sunrise penetrated the water column bright enough to illuminate it under the ice. Finally, it grabbed my shiner and I successfully landed it. I briefly thought about letting it go as a reward for it being so smart, but then remembered that it is an invasive, exotic species that does not belong in the lake. It didn't take too long for a gull to find it and have it for breakfast.