fish finder vs underwater camera

Hello,

Was planning on a fish finder for Xmas (and looking forward to the seminar on this) when my wife's co-worker stated they hardly use the fish finder but instead rely on an underwater camera. (They don't fish around Madison
apparently, else I'd try to arrange a trip with them...)

So what says the collected wisdom here, flasher or camera?

I thought most cameras have a cord of 50 or 60 feet? We did want to have something with enough range for perch fishing on Mendota (of course, one could argue that no electronics will help with that!)

Thanks in advance.

It really comes down to personal choice and what you think is fun. I use a camera more often than the flasher because I like to see what's down there. A flasher is faster to setup and use, and quickly go from hole to hole looking for fish. With a camera I can drill a hole about where I think the weed edge is, drop the camera down and see exactly where it is, and pop another hole there. With a flasher you may see some fish coming through, but what are they? Walleye? Perch? Carp? With a camera you can see for sure. A camera with visible lighting is fine for looking for things (structure, weeds, etc) but, regardless of what the manufacturers state, will spook fish. If it doesn't spook them it may change their feeding patterns. Because of this get infared. The fancy multi-colored LED's aren't much better than white ones around here. There's so much backscatter from particulates it can be like looking through a snow storm. Fishing Monona in the daylight with a camera may not be too bad, but when the sun goes down and you have to turn the lights on, then you might as well as put the camera away. Having the lights above the camera lens helps considerably, but isn't a complete fix. With the lights off in the day time I've had the camera down in schools of bluegills, and the only way I caught fish was by watching them take the bait in their mouth, they were biting so light it was very difficult to even see the spring bobber move. They make cameras with different lengths of cable. They also make a lot of different models! The best camera I've had (and I've had/got Atlantis, Aqua-Vu, Marcum, Harbor Freight and some home made ones) is the Marcum. I use this year round, and dump the video onto a digital camcorder to show other people what's laying down on the bottom of our lakes. Anyone who says only use a camera, or only use a flasher doesn't really know what they're talking about. My suggestion to you would be to buy a decent flasher since it's much faster to find fish and weeds than a camera. But I'd also spend the $125 for a cheap camera and try that out also (the cable length may only be 50 to 60 feet though). You may find you spend more time watching the camera than you do fishing. Anyone that says this is a bad thing is also misinformed, if you enjoy doing this, then do it. If you're fishing to feed your family than spend more time fishing and less time looking. Also, trying to use a camera in the bright sunlight just doesn't work. In the shanty there's no problem. Stay away from color cameras also, around here the monos give better contrast and detail. Rick

I think the cameras rock in shallow water chasing bluegills. If you're fishing deep water perch or something else that could suspend I'd take the flasher. The camera will only look at one level at a time verses covering the entire water column.