Sinking Crappie Condo's

[badbrad]

The closest lake to my home that I fish is subject to a big draw down come fall. Crappie fishing on the lake is fair at best......I was wondering if anyone could offer some suggestions with putting out structure in the lake. I'd like to sink structure that will be fishable during the winter months. The lake is usually drawn down 25 ft.

I'm thinking I should just find the channels and mark my spots with a GPS....but what about points. And what would an ideal depth be for the structure to fish during the winter months. It seems like it would be hard to sink stuff now with the lake at summer pool with trying to estimate where the water will be after it's drawn down.

It's a little far for me to drive to Kentucky Lake each week.....especially with the price of gas. I'd sure love to improve the lake close to home up a bit. I have lots more time to fish during the winter. Thanks for any help.

[Jerry Blake]

Hey Brad:

A 25-foot drawdown is tough to deal with, especially if it's not predictable and the level fluctuates through the year. The lakes I fish don't get drawn down nearly that much but the levels do change throughout the year on one of them so we have to maintain condos there from the shallows down to 40-feet when the lake is full.

The ideal situation if you can find it, is a point that extends gradually into the channel but drops off quickly on the sides. Then you can put condos at different depths down the point from near the bank down to or near the deepest water.

If you stager the depth from two to five feet and still keep the condos 30 or 40 feet away from each other you'll have an area that you can catch fish year around at any lake level. These areas are easiest to find when the lake is at its lowest point. Then you can see the shape of the points, find the top easier and get a mental picture of how the point continues underwater (along with your electronics of course).

If you can find some bamboo in your area you could wait until the lake is down to put your condos in – you’ll be catching fish on them the next day so there’s no need to put them in now while the weather is hot and you may have a better idea of what the average lake level is going to be through the winter.

I’ve come up with a new design for bamboo condos that should work real well in this type of situation. The nice thing is you can carry everything you need to build one in your boat and you can build it in your boat and drop it in about 10-minutes with someone helping you.

We’re going to sink some this week so I’ll try to get some pictures. They are simple and fast to build and the ones we put down last spring in shallow water were very productive. We haven’t tried them yet in deeper water but I think they are going to work real well.

All you need is two 8 x 8 x 16-inch cement blocks, about 3-feet of nylon rope and 15 or 20 nice bushy stalks of freshly cut bamboo 12 to 15-feet long or shorter if you wish. I fold the front seat down on my boat and put a towel or piece of carpet on the back of the seat to protect it and set the blocks there with one on top of the other with the holes horizontal and at right angles and tie them together.

With one person steadying the blocks and the other person getting the bamboo from the bottom of the boat we cram the bamboo in both holes in each block from both directions. We line up the blocks so the holes angle off to the sides so the bamboo is hanging off each side of the boat towards the back and out over the front – the ends are usually in the water.

We put the bamboo through the holes so that about a third of the stalk is sticking out the other side and put as many in each hole as we can with about equal numbers from each side. You end up with a big cross about 20-feet across - depending on how long your bamboo is - with four big heads and some open space in between. Once assemble we just pick it up by the bamboo near the block and walk it off the front of the boat and drop it. They come up about 6 to 8-feet off the bottom depending on how bushy the bamboo is.

We try to us bamboo that isn’t too big – 1-inch or less in diameter where we cut it – so we can get plenty of stalks in the holes and they aren’t too buoyant. We put the bamboo in the boat with the butt ends facing the front so we can pick them up easy to put them in the blocks.

[jfraley]

Sound good Jerry,
One thing that I done was to cement several pieces of ~3 foot pvc in a 5 gallon bucket and pre-drill holes in it. When I get to the water, I run the bamboo down into the pvc a couple of feet and shoot some screws through it. It is a lot easier to transport this way and you don't draw near the amount of attention.

[slabbandit]

Hey Jerry, I've had such good luck earlier in the year fishing my bamboo condos that a lot of the other locals are catching on and building them too. I've already lucked on to finding a few of them while trolling around. Luv that GPS!

The problem with Lake Nimrod is unless your right in the middle of the river channel, where it's 30 ft.deep, 15 to 17 foot is about as deep as I can find to place my condos. Most of my condos only have 6 feet of water covering them. I have access to several concrete blocks so I think the next condos I build should be these wider,shorter condos.

Maybe you can post step by step instructions with pictures like you did for the tall condos.

[Wardy]

Will or can willow branches replace the bamboo.? We have no bamboo..boohoo..!!

Wardy

[badbrad]

Jerry, thanks for the information. I'll definately be building some bamboo condo's.

[Mo'nBack]

We've used willows around here for a long time and they work great. They are easily accessed around the water ways, easy to cut and bundle, and they're not real bad about hanging up in. I've caught fish on the same ones for up to 4 years without ever refreshing the tops. The only problem with them is that if you bundle them up too tight, then you only catch small crappie on them, but if they are loose then the big fish can swim through them. We also use sycamores, because they grow all around our waterways, can be cut close to where you want to put them out (so they don't have to be hauled around), and because they sink on their own and don't have to be weighted down. I've caught big fish on these (ones that someone else put out and told me about) and they last for a long time and are easily refreshed just by cutting a few small trees and just drop them in on top of the existing brushpile or around it. Hope this helps some.

[Wardy]

Funny you bring that up at this time. I have been eyeballing some small willow trees around the lake I fish and was thinking.. man they sure do resemeble the bamboo that I have seen.

I was thinking about using the Willow branches also.

I don't think that they will last as long as the Bamboo but I could be wrong. Bamboo is pretty hardy stuff. Now I am talking about the stems not the leaves. The leaves on both bamboo and willow should not last very long in the water. But the bamboo shoots or stems may last a very long time. The willow branchs should last a few years also, just may not last forever though.

We have lots of willow trees growing around the edge of the lakes here in the Midwest.

We've got tons of small willows. I did attach a few to my pvc contraptions. I had to sink them all deep to keep the musckrats and beavers off.

Cross your fingers and click the bails.!!!

Wardy