The Underwater Fishing Playbook

Included free with every Cast Below camera. Written for people who have never fished with a camera before.

1. Before you get in the water

Charge the monitor fully. Unspool about two metres of cable and check the picture on dry land so you know what a good image looks like. Clip the retrieval carabiner to something solid — the cable is strong, but a dropped camera in current is gone.

2. The three ways to fish a camera

Scouting. Drop it, look, move. You are building a map of the spot before you commit a single cast. This is where most of the value is.

Watching your bait. Lower the camera so your lure sits in frame. You will learn more in ten minutes about how fish react to your presentation than in a season of guessing.

Confirming. You mark something on sonar and you want to know if it is fish, weed or timber. Thirty seconds with the camera answers it.

3. Reading what you see

Weed lines. The edge where weed stops and open bottom starts is an ambush lane. Fish sit on the open side facing the weed. Work the edge, not the middle.

Drop-offs. Lower slowly and watch the bottom fall away. Fish hold on the lip in bright light and move shallow at dawn and dusk.

Timber and rock. Any hard structure in soft-bottom water concentrates fish. One log can hold everything within twenty metres.

Clean sand with nothing on it. Move. This is the single most useful thing a camera does — it tells you where not to spend an hour.

4. What fish behaviour is telling you

Fish facing into current, holding still. Feeding. Put the bait upstream and let it drift to them.

Fish that approach the lure and turn away. Your presentation is wrong — usually too fast, or too big. Slow down first.

Fish sitting on the bottom, not moving. Inactive. Downsize and slow right down, or come back at a different time of day.

Fish that scatter when the camera arrives. Drop further from where you intend to fish and let things settle for a few minutes.

5. Setting up by situation

Bank and dock. Cable straight down beside the structure. Mount the monitor on a rod holder or keep it in the case lid to cut glare.

Kayak. Short cable is easier to manage. Keep the spool clipped so it cannot roll overboard.

Boat. Drift with the camera down and read the bottom as it passes. This is the fastest way to learn a new lake.

Ice. Lower down the hole, let the camera settle and rotate slowly. Cold shortens battery life noticeably — keep the monitor inside your jacket between looks.

6. Camera positioning

Facing down shows you bottom composition. Facing horizontally shows you fish. Most people leave it pointing down and miss everything. Angle it slightly up from the bottom and you will see far more.

In stained water get closer to what you want to see — light penetration, not the camera, is usually the limit.

7. Honest expectations

In very murky water you will see less. At night the infrared gives you a usable black-and-white picture at close range, not daylight quality. In current the camera swings, so weight it or accept some movement. Any brand of camera has these limits — anyone telling you otherwise is selling.

Questions

Email castbelowsupport@gmail.com — a real person answers.