Keith Kavajecz, programming bites and debugging tactics.

Meanwhile, the camera is something of a last resort for Parsons on structure -- a means to identify the marks when he's not catching walleyes. Time, then, to scope 'em out.

"On tight structure fishing," Parsons says, "that's where I'll use a camera if water clarity allows." Parsons' guideline for the camera's viewing range based on water clarity is that if you can see a lure a foot below the surface, you can glimpse fish within inches of the lens; when a lure is visible 10 feet away, the camera's range is diminished to two or three feet.

BASS, CARP AND WALLEYES, OH MY!
At Bull Shoals, Arkansas, where Parsons finished 3rd, Kavajecz 9th, and their buddy Bill Ortiz 1st in last year's PWT tourney, the camera was a secret to their success. During practice, they lowered a lens on fish they marked, finding that walleyes mixed with bass, carp, suckers, and all kinds of crazies. The walleyes, however, were positioned about two or three feet higher than the finned assortment. It was a signal for P&K et al. to troll crankbaits above bottom (not knock into it) on leadcore line, and it was a nuance they only could have deciphered with the underwater camera.

On one hand, Kavajecz sets his Motor Guide PTSv, a bowmount trolling motor with echo-location technology that steers the boat, while the kicker motor on the transom provides forward progress at trolling speeds to keep him on a contour where he's marking fish. All the while he watches electronics, tends a camera and, depending on the circumstances, pulls crankbaits, spinners, or something else, despite everything else going on.

By contrast, Parsons stops, pulls lines, and spends time with undivided attention on the camera to check fish position and attitude. On Bull Shoals, the P&K crew found the walleyes finning feet above bottom -- one sign of a positive attitude. Other times, though, Parsons looks with the camera to see if walleyes are pinned to bottom, lazing in mud or rocks in a negative mode that has kept him from hooking up.

However Parsons and Kavajecz differ in disposition, tournament finishes in individual PWT events and one's inclination to scout with electronics before dropping a camera, versus the other's tendency to multitask, they accomplish similar ends with their disparate means. They find fish, gauge their attitudes, and initiate a pattern with a technician's single-minded preoccupation with high science.

*Dave Scroppo, Traverse City, Michigan, is a frequent contributor to In-Fisherman publications and becomes the primary editor for In-Fisherman's Walleye Guide and Walleye In-Sider publications in January 2006.

SOUNDS OF SILENCE? Say what you will about noise spooking fish you're trying to mark, when poking around with a gas outboard. Turns out the practical experience of Parsons and Kavajecz says volumes about spooking, the result of a confluence of factors that involves engine noise and the boat's shadow -- perhaps the foreign presence in and of itself. Even though Mercury Marine encouraged Parsons, Kavajecz, and Chase Parsons, Gary's son -- 2005 PWT Rookie of the Year and second-place Championship finisher -- to run OptiMax outboards, they pushed for quiet four-stroke Verados, which the confederates believe spook fish far less than two-stroke gas motors. With Verados, both Parsons and Kavajecz say they mark fish better than with other outboards and mark more of them on subsequent passes than they otherwise might. Maybe there are 20 fish on the first graphing pass over a point, a dozen the next time, 10 or fewer with additional looks. But it could be worse. "When someone you're fishing with says, 'I went over them with my outboard and when I went back through, they weren't there', there's something to it," Parsons says. Considering the potential spooking factor, the P&K theorists say other options are to drift over the fish with the wind, or sneak atop them with an electric trolling motor. You be the judge.