Aquaview observations

On my last couple trips to the river I decided to spend a fair amount of time checking things out with the ol aquaview. This is the time of the year to do it with the water clarity as about as good as it gets. It was kind of interesting to see the scene below-before, at, and after some of my favorite wingdams. Checking the tips of the dams was interesting too.

Three things stuck out for me.

1. It was interesting what I didn’t see-namely lots of forage. In fact, I didn’t see any at all. No wonder the wingy’s are tough right now during the day. How are these eyes getting so dog gone fat?

2. The eye’s I did see were individual fish. I didn’t see any groups or schools of eyes. I thought maybe I’d see some eyes behind some of the dams with very deep water behind them-but naughta. I did see huge schools of sheephead behind a couple different dams.

3. I didn’t see any of my many, many various types of shad raps, jigs, spin rigs, wally divers, grappler shads, sunglasses, hats, etc., etc., etc. that I have left on the bottom. I wonder where all that stuff went?

Good fishn to ya!

ive got an anchor in one if tou see it nice report

Jim..

I have a bunch of crappie minnows and fatheads in a 10 gallon aquarium right now. Little fish everywhere when nobody is around the aquarium..

Now, when I turn the light on in the morning, all of them minnows panic and jam themselves into a little 2″ x 3″ house in the middle of the aquarium, and the 3 minnows that dont fit make a run for the fake weeds and bury themselves in it.

That little house is kind of creepy with 100 sets of eyes looking out of it.. but it shows how the survival instinct kicks in. Those rock on a wing dam are holding much more than is visible to the naked eye. I am sure the walleyes have no problem bumping rocks to flush a few out.

Looking at that aquarium, it starts to make more sense why the walleyes bite the cranks way better in the fall if they are bumping the bottom.. I can hear them minnows running into things when they are trying to hide… It might look like a crank or a jig bouncing across the rocks trying to evade a predator.

Fisher Daver,
That reminds me of another observation or thought I had. Looking at all that rock, I thought to myself that there must be gazillions of crayfish in the river. We hear about the gizzard shad but I haven’t heard that much about crayfish. I wonder what the situation is with them. When are they most preyed upon, what color are they, do they change color, etc. etc.? I’ve heard before that any lure that hits the bottom is imitating crayfish. Except, I did read that gizzard shad do bottom feed by stirring up the bottom looking for micro sized food items.

I’ve had a ton of fun with my Aqua view earlier this winter. The amount of fish coming through and just “shopping ” when nobody is catching anything ,” is just amazing ! What all of a sudden turns them all on is REALLY cool. Saw muskies, northerns, pannies, carp,- almost nonstop life , when at times seems dead “topside” (keeps the kids occupied durring slow times!)-Cory

The crayfish are there. I’ve seen both green and rusty brown crayfish claws stickout out of the guts of largemouth and smallmouth. Some of those claws looked like they could be from 6+ inch crayfish! Though when the big schools of shad start I see less and less crayfish sticking out of their guts.