The Best Ways to Use Underwater Fishing Cameras

If you’ve got an underwater fishing camera—or you’re thinking about grabbing one—you’re probably after more than just "cool video clips."

You want to see what’s actually happening under the surface. Where the fish are sitting. How they’re reacting. Whether that lure you’ve been throwing all day is even getting a look.

That’s where a camera like the Westin Explore Cam or Escape Cam really earns its keep. They’re light, tough, and easy to rig, but like most gear, they’re only as useful as the way you put them to work. Fishermen are using underwater cams to do everything from tracking trout behavior in clear shallows to checking how leader choice affects presentation in deeper or stained water.

Here are some of the best, most practical ways fishermen and fishing content creators can utilize an underwater cam—not just getting cool footage, but getting information you can use.

1. Cast It Inline to Film Strikes at the Lure

One of the best—and honestly, most eye-opening—ways to use an underwater camera like the Westin Explore Cam or Escape Cam is to run it inline, right on your actual fishing rig. No weird mounts or funky attachments. Just a straightforward setup: camera, leader, lure. Cast it out like you normally would, and let it ride.

At first, it feels a little strange. You’re so used to the idea that a camera has to be something off to the side, separate. But with these cams being so compact and lightweight—especially the Explore, which is barely heavier than a jig head—it just becomes part of your system. It’s not bulky enough to mess with your action, and it tracks surprisingly clean behind most lures.

If you’ve never seen what it looks like when a fish tracks a lure up close, this’ll change how you fish. You can spot leader spookiness, lure wobble at different retrieval speeds, and even see how fish behave in different water clarities.

You’ll start noticing all the little things that happen before (and sometimes instead of) fish commit to striking:

You might see a fish come in hot, then back off right at the last second. Or it’ll tail the lure for a while, just out of striking range, like it’s waiting for some cue that never comes. You’ll notice how certain retrieves produce a wobble that holds their attention longer. Or how the angle of the sun plays off your leader in a way that suddenly makes it look a whole lot more visible than you thought.

That knot you tied? You’ll see how it tracks through the water.

That flashy swivel you swore wouldn’t spook anything? Yeah—there it is, flaring and spinning like a disco ball.

That soft plastic you rigged a little crooked? You’ll watch it roll sideways mid-retrieve and know exactly why that cast didn’t work.

Once you start seeing what an underwater fishing camera records, it’s hard to go back to fishing blind.

Tech Tip: Frame Rates

Want to slow down those strike clips without them turning into a blur? Look for cameras that shoot at 60 fps or higher—it’ll give you smoother slow-mo and clearer details when reviewing fast movements underwater.

2. Watch What Happens When Fish Don’t Bite

We all love those clips where the fish crushes the bait on camera. The hero shot—the big eat on camera, the kind of clip you watch ten times in a row and maybe even throw into a slow-mo reel with some music behind it.

But honestly, the more useful footage can be the stuff where nothing happens. (Or at least, nothing you’d have noticed without a camera rolling.)

• Maybe a fish slides into frame, follows your lure for ten feet, then drifts away like it lost interest.
• Maybe it charges up fast, checks it out, then just... hovers.
• Maybe you swear you felt a nibble, but when you watch the playback, the fish never even opened its mouth. That kind of feedback is priceless. It tells you things your rod, your gut, or even years of experience can’t always confirm in the moment.

Underwater footage like that helps you second-guess the right things. Was the retrieve too quick? Did the leader spook it? Was the profile wrong for that water clarity?

Instead of burning through the same presentation all day and hoping something eventually commits, now you’ve got a reason to change things up—and a direction to go in. Especially with the Westin Explore Cam—which is so light it can be cast or trolled inline—you can get up-close reactions that explain way more than your rod tip ever could.

You can run it inline with a jig or swimbait and pick up every little moment—the flick of a tail, a head turn, a look-but-don’t-touch pass that tells you your setup’s close but not quite there.

3. Use It to Scout New Water

There’s nothing like showing up to a new body of water, looking out over it, and thinking, “Well… now what?” You’ve read the topo maps, maybe poked around Google Earth the night before, even picked a few spots you think look promising. But when it’s go time, all that planning still doesn’t tell you what’s actually going on down there.

That’s where an underwater cam can save you a lot of wasted time. Instead of firing off casts into the void and hoping for a bite—or slowly working your way through half your tackle box before figuring out there’s nothing living in that cove—you can drop or troll the camera first and let it do some of the legwork.

Not sure what kind of structure is below the surface? Don’t want to throw a bunch of lures around blind? Drop or troll the camera. The footage you get back can show whether there’s bait, fish, weeds, or just an empty stretch of sand.

Once you’ve seen a piece of structure with your own eyes, it sticks with you—you’ll fish it better, more confidently, and probably more patiently.

Now, this is especially useful in new lakes, during seasonal transitions, or when you're not quite sure how the bottom changes across a flat or shelf. The 650ft waterproofing on both of the Westin underwater cams means you can get real intel, even deep. You can run them over ledges or channel edges without worrying about pressure messing with the camera, and the footage still comes out sharp. Even if you’re not planning to fish that deep, it’s good recon, and sometimes it’s just fun to see what’s down there.

Whether it’s a school of bait getting pushed around by perch, or an old stump field that looks fishy but doesn’t show up on your electronics, an underwater cam gives you eyes while your sonar just shows blobs and arcs.

4. Review Missed Hits and Pulled Hooks

Ever set the hook too early? Too late? Was it even a hit at all?

Sometimes it’s a fish. Sometimes it’s a weed. And sometimes it’s just the bottom giving you a little love tap that felt fishy in the moment.

The only way to know for sure is to watch the video. If you’re running a camera like the Westin Explore or Escape with 60 fps high frame rate, you’ve got a clear shot at those quick moments most of us never get to see. You can slow it down frame-by-frame and watch what actually happened.

It’s one thing to feel it—it’s another to see it. And it’ll make you think twice about how and when you set the hook next time.

5. Use Trolling Footage to Fine-Tune Your Spread

If you troll for mackerel, wahoo, kingfish, or any fast-moving species, you already know speed and lure action matter. With the Escape Cam’s Y-fin stabilizer and Dive Lip, you can film the exact movement of your trolling rigs underwater—no guesswork.

You’ll spot if a bait’s spinning out, running too high, or if a trailing lure is fluttering in and out of frame. It's a good way to clean up your spread and dial in speed or leader adjustments for better results.

Tip: Battery Life

Before a long day on the water, check how long your camera lasts on a single charge. If you’re planning to troll or drift for hours, battery life becomes just as important as video quality.

6. Make Better Fishing Content

Saving this one for last, because yeah—it’s the big one. The one that, let’s be honest, probably made you want an underwater camera in the first place.

Underwater footage just plain looks cool. It breaks up the same old chest-cam angles, adds suspense to the story, and gives your viewers something they don’t see on every other fishing channel. It’s the kind of thing that snaps people out of scroll mode when they’re thumbing through their phone.

And if you’re someone who likes to share your time on the water—whether you’ve got a channel, a social page, or just like texting clips to your buddies—those underwater  shots will be the ones everyone comments on.

Think about how most fishing content looks these days. Chest cam pointed at the water. Drone shot of the boat. Maybe a GoPro rolling from the back deck. It all starts to blend together after a while.

But drop in a clip of a fish stalking your lure, turning at the last second, or exploding into frame jaws-first?

Now you’ve got something people will remember.

That’s the beauty of cameras like the Westin Explore Cam. It’s small enough to cast or troll, and it doesn’t require a bunch of rigging or menu-diving. You rig it, you send it, and it does its job. Then, when you get back to the dock or boat ramp, you can get the footage right there on your phone. Just clip, trim, and post if you want to.

If you’re creating fishing video content, editing full-length vids for YouTube or doing multi-cam stuff with your phone, a GoPro, and maybe even a DSLR, these underwater shots are the glue. They give you transitions, cutaways, context, and drama. You can match the underwater view of a strike with the fight up top. Or flip between what you saw and what the fish saw. It makes even a slow day on the water look like a thought-out, professional piece.

And you don’t have to be some full-time creator grinding out weekly content to make use of this. One or two good underwater clips can elevate your whole video. They show people not just that you caught a fish, but how it all came together. The way it followed. The moment it committed. The difference your retrieve made.

So yeah—underwater footage is extremely cool. But it's also a tool. Give it a few trips. Once you’ve seen what’s really going on under the surface, it’s hard to ignore how much you were guessing before.

Tech Tip: Know Your Storage Limits

Longer trips mean more footage—make sure your camera can handle high-capacity storage cards or has enough internal memory for a full session without stopping to offload files.

Use the Right Camera for the Right Session

The Explore Cam is tiny—not much different from a AA battery—and it’s perfect when you really want to stay agile. It’s great for quick strikes, scouting spots, or just getting some extra B-roll during a casual day on the water. The Escape Cam’s just a little bigger, with nearly double the battery life (2.5 hours) and a stabilizer fin that keeps your footage steady even when you’re trolling.

If you’re planning to run long drifts or deeper trolling passes, go with the Escape. For shallower work or cast-and-retrieve setups, the Explore’s your buddy.

The Bottom Line

In the end, the best use of an underwater camera isn’t just all the great video you can show off—it’s also the info you can keep for yourself to become a better fisherman. The kind of details that don’t show up on sonar and sure don’t get mentioned on the local report.

You can watch how fish behave, how structure shapes movement, and how your own presentations perform. Learn where bait stacks up. How current pushes across that hump you thought was flat. Which way a weed line leans when the wind shifts. You don’t get that from a chest cam or a fishfinder screen.

So when someone at the dock or back at the ramp asks how you pulled that fish out of a spot they’ve blanked on all week, you don’t have to smile and say it was just one of those days. You’ll know why it worked. And you’ll know it wasn’t luck.