Aqua Vu Question

[logger]

To any of you guys that own an aqua vu. How do you like it? Is it worth the investment?

[Raul]

A friend of mine is a sucker for fishing devices always looking for a small edge, he asked me about the Aqua View, I told him it was a very interesting concept and that even though it promised it 's application would be quite limited and not worth the investment, a better depthfinder than the one he had would be  a better choice. As usual he didn 't pay attention so it makes me wonder why the hell he takes the bother to ask for my opinion if he already has his mind set and is going to purchase the gadget he has in mind anyway, he purchased it. Oh yeah we sure had a blast using it, watching the fish and so on until it rained. The camera has been without use since May just because the water gets murky and you can 't see squat underwater. So if your lake is crystal clear all year round then it would be a nice addition, if not better spend the dough in something else.

I 'm not going to say the same about that 3D side image depth finder he purchased, that thing is friggin awsom !  

[Cajun1977]

loved it for ice fishing

[Tpayneful]

My partner bought a no name camera and monitor from a warehouse wholesaler (Harbor Freight...I think) for $100. He never used it. It is in my basement right now. I have used it about 4 times. The only way that you can see anything with it is to get it about one to two feet from the bottom. I have a power drive trolling motor so I can sit down and operate the trolling motor and raise and lower the camera while I am looking at the monitor. I have been able to find a few brush piles this way. I actually find them by running the camera into them! You are looking at the bottom and all of a sudden you see branches and wham.... you hit it. Throw out a marker bouy and document the spot. I really don't have enough time to use it much. I really would like to mount the camera on an extendable arm so I could drop it down and point the camera. That way I could check out where bass are under docks.

[Gatorbassman]

I use mine all the time but I have very clear water. If there is even a little bit of stain on the water you can forget about it.

[Crestliner2008]

I don't have one....yet. But I did a lot of internet investigation prior to selecting the model which I'm pretty sure I'll be buying this coming spring. First of all, the concept of being able to distinguish what it is you are actually looking at on your sonar is indisputably valuable.  Just from the phychological advantage of knowing that the school of fish you are looking at on your sonar is really a school of 5 lb. bass has got to give you the edge! It would certainly keep me trying harder and switching presentations. Better to know that than fishing over a school of bullhead, no? I looked at the Aqua View and read many reports and talked to a few of my local fisherpersons who have them. They say they are not very good units for various reasons. I also looked at the Atlantis, Cabelas (which actually IS an Atlantis) and the Marcum. The best online video presentation was, by far, the Marcum. And in reading user reports on this unit, it appears this is the "top" of the heap, so-to-speak. The Marcum VS-560 looks to be the "cadillac" of underwater viewing systems at this time. The major drawback being that they do not provide a digital recording device for these systems - yet.  It would be nice to be able to catalog various videos with GPS locations at various times of the year on your particular body of water. What an advantage! I will post my own observations if I end up shelling out the $600. for this unit!  

[5bass]

I have owned two so far. The very first one they put out and then the Aqua Vu Scout XL was the latest one. My experience with them was not what I had anticipated although I didnt use the first one for the same things I did the second one. The first I used to strictly look at my brushpiles and determine what type of fish, if any, were on the brush. It got cumbersome to use and I lost interest rather quickly so I sold it.

The second one I used strictly for looking around and under docks. Its probably one of the smartest moves I ever made. The lake I regularly fish has about 6 million docks. Alot of the coves in the lake are lined with docks on both sides. In the winter months I would go out to a string of docks and look under everyone of them in a particular cove so I could find out which docks were the most likely to hold bigger fish. Those docks usually had sunken brush, rocks, stumps, cinderblocks, grass, tires or something under them. It really keyed me in to which docks I SHOULD be fishing and eliminated the 'nothing' docks......so when I ran into one of the coves lined with docks, I only had to fish 6 or 8 of them, instead of spending 2 hours fishing all of them. It was time well spent.

You'd be surprised at what people sink under their docks.

One thing I did was I took a 10' stick of 3/4" conduit and attached the camera and cable to it and marked the direction the camera was pointing. It was a big help. All I had to do was stick the conduit in the water and watch the screen. Without the conduit, dealing with the cable was the biggest drawback to the Aqua-Vu cameras.....you spend alot of time trying to figure out which way the camera is pointing and spinning the cable around which resulted in not much screen watching ....it just wasnt working out well. The conduit made it 100X easier. If you need to change the angle of the camera, keep some zip-ties and duct tape close by, they will come in handy.

[IneedAnewScreenName9886691]

Great info and post 5 bass!  The conduit is an incredible idea!  Thanks for sharing your experiance!  

[5bass]

Great info and post 5 bass! The conduit is an incredible idea! Thanks for sharing your experiance!

Thanks. I really had a bad time with the first one because I was always messin' with the cable. Sure, I could drop it on the brushpiles and spin it around to see what was near the brush but looking around and under docks couldnt be done effectively without the conduit. I really feel like constantly messin' with the cable is the biggest drawback to the underwater cameras.....other than muddy water.  ;D

The good thing about using conduit is that if you want to look deeper than 8 or 10', just get a coupling and another 10' stick of conduit and you're set.