more condo ideas

[bwood12043]

This is my first post, but not the last.

After reading all the crappie condo posts and looking at all the great ideas, my husband and I got a few ideas of our own and are trying a few experiments.

We have a dock close to a creek channel with about 10-12' at the end of the dock, dropping into 20-22 feet.

Even with 2 boats in the boathouse, sometimes I love jsut being able to go down, fish even 15 minutes before work in the morning or after work calms down in the evening.

Anyway, we built a couple of mini-condos and built them to fit right up against the dock extending out about 5 feet. To do this, we just pointed all the "stuff" out in that direction, making the overall a sort of half-moon shape. Did this with two and after only 2 days, I caught a couple of nice keepers this morning.

We are also building some revised "stake beds" for the edge of the old creek channel. It is fairly silted in with no real radical drop, but every year of the 4 years we have lived here, we have caught good ones out along that area. Bass also.

I had some plastic "blanket boxes", the cheap ones from the Dollar Store, and I had the excess slats from some plastic "plantation" blinds we put up throughout the house last year (just goes to show, don't throw anything away) I poured the concrete into the box (size of these is about 8" deep by 18" x 30", but I guess any size would do) , then stood the 2" wide plastic slats up in the concrete, using more slats laid across to hold them while concrete set up. I had slats of 24", 36" and 48" inch widths, so the "stakes" are all different lengths. In a couple of these "beds" I put a 5' piece of PVC scrap with slats screwed in at various angles and heights.

I am hoping that by the base being wide and flat, it will be stable.
Also, the one I have finished released from the pliable plastic "box" so I can use it again, but if I have one that won't come loose, not much is lost (about $2).

I will get some pics of how the rest of them turn out.

In this lake, it does not take much on this end of the lake to attract fish, as there is so little cover.

Now I look at everything , every old piece of "junk" in the storeroom, with a whole new eye and I am excited about all the ideas coming to me in the middle of the night.

Christmas trees and the like don't seem to last long in this lake, don't know why unless it's the saline content of the lake.

But these should not only last, they should be flexible enought to not only imitate nature (even the biggest oak sways) but they should cause no prop damage should the lake level ever drop that much. (God forbid, but it is Texas, ya know)

Thanks so much to everyone for all the great ideas and I know the fish thank you too, for though I may catch a few more, there will be many more that survive the Hybrid attacks because of this new habitat.

Our hybrids can wipe out a whole school of crappie in a few minutes, have watched it on depth finder in deep water. And cormorants too.

Run Crappie, hide, hide, and grow up nice and big and fat for my skillet.

Great fishing days to all of you ! ! !

[bwood12043]

I nearly forgot to mention this.

Many of you may not often visit stores like Big Lots, Dollar Store, General Dollar, etc. But for those who do not have fresh bamboo available and are neat freaks and don't even have any scrap PVC, etc laying around, here are some possibilities.

I found dry bamboo very cheap at several of these stores in the flower, craft sections.

I even found some really cheap at Steinmart on clearance sale. Two 5" pieces for less than $2.

Other neat things available there were tufts of plastic grasslike material which is thin, plastic and about 18" high. Going to stick a few of these in at the base of some of the structures we build to see how they do. We have a sizeable nutrea population that keeps most of what little grass we have cleared out, but maybe they won't like the "flavor" of this and it will give the bitty bait fish a hidie hole.

Boy, there is no end to the ideas.

Again, good fishing to all of you and if any of you are from around here, keep me posted and I will do the same.

[FalconSmitty]

Well Hello there Missy and welcome to crappie.com.. You said your husband so I figure...!
great ideas the grass thing should work. You will see it for sale soon as it works. lol
It is amazing how fast you start catching on these things. My lake is clean too so the bamboo was like instant. Seems to easy.. I went monday and didn't use any of my condos. I wanted to see if I could still catch them somewhere else. The condos make fishing easy. Good luck and tightlines to ya.

[FalconSmitty]

p. s.
Have you met Moose?