Underwater observations - rudd, perch & tech

[Steve Walker]

of course that would be the wrong way to set a rig up with a solidly fixed lead (crosslocked to trace for example), something poach had taught me as pretty basic safe rig thinking. from what I can glean the waterwolf "is" to be setup like that which is a worry to me.

There is more than one way to rig it, but I guess the default would be fixed.

 

Here's the thing - if losing a lead cost you £120 a time, we probably wouldn't have any worries about rig safety, because nobody would want to lose one, tethered to a fish or not.

[Steve Walker]

Steve, do you reckon these would work at extreme depth or would it be too dark? Is there a light that could be fitted? I'm thinking of the reservoirs in 40-80+ft... would be very interesting to see the zander on the bottom!

Hard to say, I'm not sure how much light there is at 80+ feet. It does seem to be pretty good at low light levels, at the moment it is blacking out about 8:30pm in 15 feet of water. I will bring it to the fish-in and drop it down on a rope, see if it picks anything up. The device is safe to 300 feet

[Steve Walker]

If they are not feeding hard I would still bait up with a little groundbait as I think this attracts them to your swim even if they do not feed over it. I feel it still pulls them in for a look and having fish in front of you even for short spells at least gives you a chance of catching them. My basic Tench fishing consists of putting in a decent amount of groundbait laced with very small food items hemp, maggots, casters or crushed boilie and mini pellets and then fish some thing small over it like double maggot. If they are feeding hard then I think you will pick them up on almost anything, but small items of bait is my preferred option.

 

However, when I am struggling for a bite and there is no evidence of Tench even being around i.e no fizzing, dirty water, rolling or line bites then its amazing how often a change in bait to something you are not feeding like a big bunch of worms or prawn can get you a bite. This does sort of fit in with the idea of "drive by" feeding when they may initially be attracted by the baited area but ignore the bulk of the bait but quickly grab the stand out item.

Yes, I think that's probably about right.

 

I think it is likely that the presence of smaller fish feeding is a factor in them coming in for a look.

 

The great thing about this camera is that all these theories become testable!

[Andy_1984]

On the safety issue, I don't think it's that people clam up when that question is asked, it's more they roll their eyes and move on

or more like they cant explain using a fixed camera but setup weak links with leads. Whats it to be ye cant have it both ways just because of a price tag.

[Steve Walker]

I think leads on weak links are a different issue, to be honest. They are likely to snag, being heavy and dangly, and being able to break out without losing the fish is a no-brainer. A camera mounted in line with the main line is not so likely to snag, in most situations it would be stuck in something you would have had to pull the fish through anyway, and given the mounting mechanism if it did get irretrievably stuck with strong enough braid if you pulled in the right direction you would be able to snap the mounting off the body of the camera.

 

This is the bit that the line attaches to:

 

 

This is how it attaches;

 

 

 

It's basically a length of wire inside a plastic tube which fits into a groove and has a lug at the end to locate it. It's solid, but if you pulled hard against a trapped camera I think you could free it.

[Andy_1984]

My point: Could a tench, carp, barbel, or pike. Without trying to sound like a (before some other smart arse calls me it) pike police i see no difference from cam to a lead but i see your point.

[Steve Walker]

A fish probably could not, I think. To my mind, it's pretty straightforward with pike - if you leave it out there with trebles in it, it's probably had it. So fishing strong enough not to be broken is probably the greater consideration that whether it's possible to lose the camera and leave a fish attached to it. There might be some additional risk in having something else on the line that could get caught and maybe you would not be able to break the mount off if the angles were just wrong, but it's a small risk. Given that even with best practice and intentions, catching pike kills a few (we can call it "pressure" if putting it that way makes people uncomfortable) it's just a question of whether that risk is within the range that we are happy to subject pike to.

 

 

With singles, tethering is probably a more relevant consideration - I think that if you habitually used 10lb mainline, using, say, 50lb braid to the camera and then 10lb mono to your usual rig would make it pretty bloody unlikely that the line would ever break on the rod side. I would think that fishing for carp or tench with very heavy braid and a five inch 3oz camera attached to the line would be pretty clumsy, so unless I was trying to figure out to make a rig work better or really wanted some close up footage I think my way of placing it on a separate rod is better.

[Vagabond]

A lot of the underwater video done at Wingham by Sharkbyte showed this "Drive by" feeding.

When I first joined Wingham I had a chat to Fred J Taylor about the best tactics for tench.

 

As soon as he learnt that Wingham was a gravel pit, Fred summed it up in his own fashion.

 

"Happy wanderers, mate, happy wanderers"