Behind the Scenes Look at "Zoom Zone Fishing"
While the title of this show might sound boring, putting it together was a great deal of fun. If you were wondering what a Zoom Zone is, well it’s a feature found on Vexilar FL-18 and FL-20 sonar units. It was developed by Vexilar almost eight years ago and has been a real benefit to anglers. In a nutshell, the split-screen zoom feature of a Vexilar allows you to see the bottom six feet of water in 60 feet, just as if you were fishing in only 6 feet of water! The resolution given by the Vexilar is out of this world and it has directly helped anglers catch more fish, especially ones that like to hug the bottom in deep water. For this reason, we dedicated an entire show to what this feature can do to enhance your success.
Fishing with Keith “KONG” Kuebelbeck was a real treat. He is a fun, light hearted angler who has a God given gift to catch fish. It’s something I often see in very athletic people. These special people have the ability to learn and adapt quickly to any fishing situation. For this adventure, we drove out of Lyback’s Resort on the south end of Mille Lacs Lake in Central Minnesota. The rain had been coming down hard for two straight days and nights. The access was closed due to water run-off so Kong and I climbed onto his big ATV and headed about five miles out to the prime perch waters of the big lake.
If you watched the broadcast version of the show, you had to notice the water on the camera lens. Let me tell you, it was NOT from fish splashing, but rain. It was a miserable day to be on the ice, but the funny part was that while I was wrapped up warm and dry in rain gear and a Cold Snap ice suit, Kong was as happy as a clam in just a light jacket. To say Kong is not a macho dude would be an understatement. He is one of the toughest men I have ever met in my entire life. An ex-football superstar, he is a giant of a man, but a very happy go lucky guy who really didn’t let the rain dampen his spirits and while he broke-off four monster perch in a row because of his bone jarring hook-set , it never phased him a bit. He just kept moving from hole to hole looking for pods of perch. Time was short on the broadcast version of the show, but Kong caught a dozen very nice perch in the first hour and within two hours we were heading back to shore with a nice segment shot. Kong is defiantly a go-to guy, and one heck of a winter angler.
Fishing with Tommy George and Jim Hudson on a small northern Wisconsin lake was non-stop laughs. Tommy George is a resident of Eastern Minnesota, within sight of Wisconsin. It is a little known fact that it was Tommy George who discovered how effective the original FL8 was for ice fishing and presented it to Vexilar as a possible business idea. The rest is history, but needless to say, Tommy George is a fishing machine and did a great job on the show, but what you didn’t see on air is that on three more occasions during this day long filming session Tommy got into pods of fish and caught them one after another for 15 minutes straight each time. We lost count how many fish he caught, so for the show, we just picked one of the shorter fish catching sessions and the little bass make for a nice close to the segment.
Jim Hudson is one versatile angler, after spending three days with his students at his fishing school catching bass and trout, he comes on this trip to show everyone how artificial lures and the Auto Zoom feature can be used with great success on deep water sunfish. While we were all fishing the same 400 acre lake, Jim was not into the schooling fish like Tommy George had about 150 yards away. Jim had a steady stream of nice gills coming through the hole. In many ways, Jim was using the Zoom Zone feature of a Vexilar exactly how it was intended. He would note the interest level of fish and adapt his artificial bait offering to get them to strike. Jim discovered that going with larger bait offering not a smaller as one might think when fish reject a lure was the real secret. While watching the fish react to the action of his bait on his FL-20, he found that by going smaller, the fish actually were not as interested, but the moment he went to a larger plastic wiggler, the fish would charge the bait. He went even larger and they just killed it! What a lesson in Zoom Zone fishing logic, but it never made it on air….
Tommy George on the other hand was using a much different strategy of walking the lake looking for pods of aggressive fish willing to hit his bait offering. Both of these anglers were successful, and both used radically different methods to catch a fish. The Zoom Zone feature of the Vexilar made both possible and that was a lot of fun.
The crazy thing about this trip is that the only access was located on the North side of the lake and the warm weather was making for some interesting ice conditions next to shore. Check out the IFT photo Gallery to see how we got across the open water. It was fun because it was only two feet deep and nothing to worry about, but the last thing an ice fisherman wants to experience is the feeling of the ice breaking beneath your feet!
