A longer day but got a couple

Yes, this what I said, too....
Sometime fish is following the lure when you raise it up, and you see it is the same one which was at the bottom.
However, more frequently I see the shade comes from nowhere, detected only on entrance to the cone of signal and having fast attack to bait.
On screen you see that as coming from the bottom, looks like same way as following fish on slow move up does, but not in reality.

I am playing with sensitivity on my fishfinder, trying to keep combination of sensitivity and contrast ( Hummingbirds Helix 7) to see every distant shade, trained in the past on Lake Simcoe chasing Lakers The best sonar performance, IMXO, is when you see a bit of noise on the screen, but clearly separating objects from that noise. The width of reliable fish detection quite large that on clear screen and just fish shades under the boat.

Yes, those that come out of nowhere can for sure be from outside of the cone. But those that are seen for a bit on bottom and then come up...well, we know what they were. These ones can also rocket up very, very quickly. It really depends on their mood and also how fast you reel up. Sometimes, too fast and they turn away. Sometimes too slow and they continue to follow but no strike either. It can be frustrating sometimes
Interesting observation with the sonar performance. I will play around with the sensitivity and colour line to be able to see the sharp change in the thermocline. In general, I like the screen to be clear of noise but sensitive enough to see my lure (and reasonably decent amounts of baitfish) well but I find that sometimes, I have to change the sensitivity at different times because it can get noisier or less sensitive (if that makes any sense) - I am suspecting it may be extra noise from wind and waves???
On a similar note, do you (or anyone reading this) know why anyone may want to have any surface clutter? What is the benefit of having any surface clutter? For my kind of fishing, I haven't found a need to keep any surface clutter.
I also started fishing for WF on Simcoe and for many, many years (even when there was no closed season and I believe when there was no limit on them - I was pretty young then Sometimes, there is a lot of down time when ice fishing so there is much more time to play around with sonar settings, esp. if you are in a rental commercial hut and can't just pick up and move to another location.