Rayburn report

[Tonykarter]

47 in a 72-quart ice chest. Put six of these out in the Black Forest back in March with bamboo stalks sticking out of the ends of all of the 1/2" PVC. That made each one over fifteen feet across, fifteen feet high. Tie-wrapped bunches of 6-8' bamboo stalks vertically to the pvc pipe in a circle about half way from the center of each. When done each would have made a pretty good duck blind. I'm done cutting willows and dragging and weighting them. This is too easy in comparison: glue together above desired drop site, stick bamboo in pvc pipe-ends, tie-wrap more on the pvc to augment, thread five bricks on bottom pipe, drop. DONE. Besides, they out-produced our willow-only brush piles this past Spring. And not by a small margin. They strapped it on any and all of our wood-only piles. I've done willows since the 70's, and this old dog has learned a new trick: Bamboo/pvc out-fishes wood-only. Four on bottom in a square, then two dropped on top of them in somewhat of a pyramid. Singles of these back in several deep coves in the Spring would produce a limit if allowed to rest for a day or two, but this mega-brushpile out on the main lake did not crank up good until about the last week in May. Thank the Lord that we put so much bamboo on them: Downscan only shows the bamboo and the bricks, the pvc cannot be seen. It would take a very educated eye to identify it as a brush pile. Looks more like fish around shad balls. For that reason it goes unmolested. We got fat off of that hog up until my 90 Merc broke a ring first week in June. Just got it back together and broke in last weekend. Have not been to it all summer. These from 2-4:30, most hitting our minnows aggressively right above the top of the pile, so much so that your line went slack and got coils in it as they came up out of the pile to take them as they dropped. We only had to measure three, the others easily over the 10" size limit. Most 12-14", my (our) best per-fish weight average in forty years of crappie fishing. Our other, smaller piles like these that are not on the main lake are only producing one or two keepers and the rest being 5-8" throw-backs. The big crappie are still out in the main lake as are the shad, the Fall move back "shallow" having not commenced yet.

[vic n]

Great looking cover and a beautiful cooler full of fish! WTG!

[sniperei]

where did you pick up the center piece

[Tonykarter]

PM'd you. I don't think the vendor is a sponsor here, so no spam or free adv.

[scrat]

Nice cooler full of crappie. That fish habitat will be their for a long long long time. Thanks for sharing the pictures.

[Tonykarter]

I am most interested in seeing how they weather the wind generated current through the winter that historically has flattened my other piles. With the eight bottom pipes spayed out in all directions all it could do would be to roll on another eight. Not shown in the picture is the one pipe that goes straight down in the center...I'm holding it in my hand. It is the one piece of pipe that has to be cut shorter than the others. That is the pipe that you slide through a few bricks and then glue on a tee to keep them on. We lost much fewer hooks this year too

[Tracker123]

Just curious, can you see PVC on a down scan image?

[Redge]

Tonykarter can you pm me the info also about the center piece, please! Thanks.

[RLCRAPPIE]

Nice mess of fish. Great post full of details thanks for sharing all of the info. Good luck with you piles this fall and winter.

[Tonykarter]

Randy I cannot draw the pvc on either downscan, sidescan or sonar. I cannot see anything on just your regular high quality sonar, neither the pvc nor the bamboo. You can only barely see the bamboo on sidescan if it is only slightly off to the side, and you will see nothing if more than 30 feet to the side. Idling across it with the big motor the downscan will draw a picture of bamboo leaves which just look like a school of baitfish, but absolutely nothing on the sonar screen. The downscan will show the leaves as being something akin to little pods of individual baitfish, not a white cloud of shad. Going directly over it slowly with the trolling motor the downscan will vaguely draw the stalks of bamboo spayed in all directions with the leaves on the end of the stalks, but not the pvc that holds it there, hence the perception of only little fish to the uneducated, with the stalks perceived as the trails of little fish moving up in the water column that our graphs often display. Unless you already know that it is bamboo what is drawn is not enough to pique the interest of most fishermen. It was a learning process. When we first went back we actually thought someone had grappled them and dragged them off! We had put them out at about 10pm to be stealthy, had fished all day and we were dead tired. Even with great lighting to triangulate and GPS assistance we were not completely sure of their exact location with any level of confidence, especially once we went over them and what was drawn for us did not correspond to anything that we previously recognized as a brush pile. We knew about where they were, but not exactly where. And they did not assist us in relocating them even a little bit. We trolled over the waypoints from several directions and there was just nothing there that we saw that made us throw out a buoy knowing that it was the right place. I tell you how confused we were: On most of them we had to pick up the Carolina rig and drag it around until we felt the weights clunk on the plastic. Thank God for the telegraphing quality of braided line. We dropped a buoy and THEN went back over it to educate ourselves as to what one looked like and what we had to look for to find them. Until more old crappie salts and guides get on to bamboo I think these will be secure for a while from predation, other than being observed over them pulling them over the side. I read somewhere on here that you cannot see pvc on sonar because its density is very near that of water. That is what motivated me to research what was out there in the way of man-made pond and lake habitat and that is when I stumbled across that center piece. We put them out in late Feb, early March. We knew the willows wouldn't sprout for a couple of months, so when we were on the way to the lake I was thinking yaupon or some perineal. However, when I looked over on the side of the boat ramp and was like, "Hey...there is some bamboo...wonder if that would work?" Turns out that was a blessing as it inserts easily into the ends of the pipe, probably much easier than anything else. This is work best done on a pontoon boat as they are quite ungainly. I would not want to try to raise them to re-charge the bamboo next year, probably couldn't get them into the boat without breaking them a bit. Besides, I cannot conceive of a way to easily grapple them to get them to the surface. I'm thinking scuba. Go down, find it, pull bunches down by rope, decorate. I'm ordering another dozen centers and will get started building again in late February. Anyone got a couple of scuba setups for these already in the water?