I myself have had great success so far with the bamboo habitat and don't lose half as many hooks as I do in other wood structure.:twocents
I myself have had great success so far with the bamboo habitat and don't lose half as many hooks as I do in other wood structure.:twocents
I decided to drop some PVC structure next to some other natural brush I have dropped. The natural brush is in a proven effective location that has produced several solid fishing trips. I figured the PVC will improve the natural brush and hopefully add some even larger crappie as the gaps between the poles is larger..
Using PVC is tricky because we want to make it look nice and get a feeling of accomplishment...most of the time, we make PVC cover that is pretty much useless to the fish.
These are a few examples of cover that has not produced well in our lake. The idea was good but the construction left alot to be desired.
Cover needs to provide basic security and resting areas for crappie...that means it has to be big/thick or dense. Then they look for cover to provide shade or Ambush points...big/bulky.
As you can see, not many Crappie can fit in any of this cover and be safe or secure.
You would have to really add alot more PVC to make it dense so it could hold more Crappie.
We started our projects from the point of what would provide cover like a tree, or a stump field, or dock posts, and built from there.
The milk crate cover is just a big stump.
The bottom crate is lined with 10 hole bricks that can be used by craws, then the first and second are filled with woods and the 3rd and 4th are empty for small fish/fry. Add 5 or ten in an area and on electronics they look like a rock, but to Crappie they are a stump field
The underwater picture that you are trying to reproduce is like the first 4 pics...you can use the PVC in the pics before, but you have to group them tight, lay them on top or laying across each other, or make them dense.
All the cover pictured was packed tight in groups, the 1 boat load covered a small room area on a drop-off.
You can use all PVC...but you need a big main beam or 2, and then pack it dense so a Crappie can swim around in it or suspend there!
Normally for Crappie, each small area has 10 or 15 pieces of added cover so it is productive.
Im glad you responded with some real life experiences and insight. I have just dropped 2 of my PVC structures and can make adjustments on the next few rounds. How many milk cartons do you stack? How many stacks do you place in one location?
I normally stack 3 or 4 crates...then they look exactly like a rock on the bottom...if you put them in rocky areas, no one will ever know they are there except you.
I try to get 10 together in a "stump field" or mix 3-4 in with other cover to provide Crappie with all options they need.
My luck was phenomenal...my best friend moved into a new place that had an old barn that had over 1500 milk crates....he gave them all to me to get rid of them...they are all in our 2500 acre lake...and you can't "see" a single one! Lol
I put out some bamboo last year and still have not seen any fish on them. I have now gotten access to some strips of poplar wood left from a millworks place. I’m gonna start putting them out this weekend.
I like the PVC but what if u want it to be found (IE on private lakes?). I thought of having a solution of the following:
-Shove sticks or metal rod inside some of the PVC pipes
-Add cement into some of the PVC pipes
-Add a combination of both into some pvc pipes
This will also help it to sink a bit. What do yall think?
a quick point to make, consider the MAIN reason that crappie and other predators are hanging around brush piles, willow, bamboo, PVC. cover ? yes. shade, also yes. but the MAIN reason is to find food/ prey. the milk crates/ ' stumps' are as effective as they are is because the osage orange/ hard wood is slowly consumed by various things that are eaten by slightly larger things that in turn attract minnows and bait fish while the 10 hole bricks also provide cover for crayfish. using naturals slightly shallower with a couple of PVC attractors deeper has repeatedly proven to be the 'best' of both worlds. and lastly, even if you make the most effective 'stealthy' attractors that cunning highly experienced serious experts can devise the fish they attract still have that pesky swim bladder inside that make them stand out like a mouse turd in a bowl full of white sugar on any sonar worthy of the name...