Got mine yesterday and tried it in low light and in the dark. Image was good even from a distance of 10′. Same for infrared imaging in a dark room. I just got to see what the school of fish are on my screen that won’t bite anything. Hopefully image quality in different water clarities and at longer distances will make it worth keeping.
I’ll post pictures.
I haven’t used one in YEARS, but when I did it was an older marcum model with IR. It didn’t give the best picture quality during low light but worked. Depends a lot on water clarity. Guessing that one was from 2005-2008? I’m sure they’ve gotten a lot better.
Yes, I have 3 actually that I use regularly. One open water that does a good job in sunlight, a small one for hole hopping shallow weed flats in the winter and a larger one for the fish house. I consider it as important as any other electronics…and I use them all!!
Poor water clarity due to suspended algae made the unit useless. Sending it back. It might have worked in a deeper lake with clear water, but this lake averages 7′-8′ – less due to a drought – and no inflow for months.
The schools on sonar gave me an idea of location patterns. The number would have been more than 31 if I had gotten there before 12:30pm, but catching bass, crappie, sunfish and yellow perch that fight like crazy is better than staying home anytime!
I think they’re a gimmick that have faded away.
They are fantastic in the right situation, otherwise they suck.
The camera’s not going to happen. I don’t fish much when the cold weather slides in in Oct. and that’s when the water clears. Just never realized that suspended/floating algae is uniform in the water top-to-bottom unless there is normal rainfall. Amazing how ultra dry some states are while other states have flooding. (A weird thing are nighttime temps going down to 39 some nights. Even 45 is low for late Aug./early Sept. Hate to see my heating bill this winter.)
At least the fishing’s turned on! Will be out there until the cold gets too uncomfortable.
I use one all the time ice fishing. I stopped using it in the boat because of clarity and nausea. I get motion sickness easy and between waves and a moving screen, I’m on the edge of chumming.
In most states chummming is illegal. 
I only use mine to see what is going on when the fish ain’t biting or to scout which is why I got one. Got it for a price I could not refuse so had to do it. it’s basically a fun little toy
I have a Marcum and use ot a fair amount, both summer and winter.
Sometimes it’s pretty humorous watching how the fish behave down there.
This color water is normal for summer months. It’s like looking through pea soup. The long drought has reduced water clarity further. I no longer ice fish or fish mountain lakes that are generally colder and the water clearer.
Camera’s going back.
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I use one all the time, for scouting though. I love finding the different structure or weeds. I also use mine for fishing in the boat to find what type of gravel and rocks are exactly below me.
I have the aquavu 715c
They were a thing till FFS came along.
Hydro-where does the camera beat the FFS? I’m guessing weeds
See if this goes through, I’m currently on LOW. I like the camera for weeds for sure. I can drop it into weed flat and see fish that just don’t get picked up by FFS. The other area I it is for fish ID. Couple recent examples. Little while back I was fishing a point on Gull, marked some fish, threw a few different presentations at them, no bite dropped camera down, was a school of suckered. Now sometimes I’ll see walleye and suckered mixed together, not this time. Another time on Pelican I saw half dozen fish sitting off a hump figured to be walleye dropped camera down, all largemouth. So it’s a tool I use in those ways.
I keep the smallest Aqua-vu on hand in the boat and on ice, the micro 2.
I use it a few times each season, notably to find cell phones that go bye-bye. I’ve got a small steel plate on the back of my phone case now and I carry a really strong but small magnet with me. That little magnet is the best stud finder in the world, also good for grabbing lost fishing gear on the ice.
I’ve used the camera in the summer to just examine what the bottom composition is when I fish areas I’m unfamiliar with.
I had one (sold it). It was most useful for finding the weed edges, or looking for structure I knew was nearby, but not specifically where it was in relation to the hole I was fishing – think old submerged stumps, a crib, rock to mud transitions, etc.
I think the camera probably slowed down my catch rate when trying to use it to watch fish, versus just getting into the spot I wanted and relying on a flasher and bite detection through a rod tip. The cord management, spinning, holding it, etc. wasn’t worth trying to “live” fish with it. They’re a great scouting tool though.
Good to have one with a reel-using it is not always the best use of time if you like actually catching fish-watching those buggers can be addicting.
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