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I'm building a PVC crappie attractor and I understand they are difficult to find with some fish finders. I have a Hummibird 597ci HD Combo and was wondering if this unit would be able to find it? I plan on placing it in the deepest part of the lake which is only maybe 12-13'.
Mr. Moderator if you need to move this to the Electronics area here feel free to.
Thanks.
GPS it/ them immediately as it is 'splashed'. the fish it holds aren't hard to 'see' and you might watch it start loading up rather quickly...
I wonder why this is, could it be because the pvc is porous in the walls? I have issue sometimes finding bamboo.
I read on here, it is round therefore not a lot of return to FF.
Hint look for the shadow!
Lowell turner is right, the fish are easy to see.
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Basically PVC has almost the same density as clear water.
With it's shape and being hollow, it allows radar/sonar to pass through, and since it is the same density it can be hidden.
Also by using 60 grit sandpaper or a steel bristle wheel, you can really groove the PVC to get major algae adhesion...which absorbs even more waves. Using other plastics with holes like milk crates or pipes with alot of holes helps to hide cover even more.
Stained water with suspended particulate helps hide it even more! lol
We used alot of plastic in our cover drops, so it would benefit the fish and never be found.
I just put a wad of used aluminum foil in the tops of the PVC pipes. You see a bunch of returns on your FF about 5-6' above the bottom with nothing underneath.
That should work great.Quote:
Originally Posted by Opie1
I've also read that it's because if there's no cap on the PVC water gets in it but if you put caps on it you will be able to see it I've never tried it but it might work.
The air trapped in the pipe by the cap should simulate a fishes air bladder which is what most fish finders see. Should work well
darn unstealthy fish making my attractors as obvious as a mouse turd in a bowl full of sugar...
The new finders have no trouble finding pvc structure. I can count the number of spokes in the pvc attractors in my slips using both my Solix and my LiveScope units.
And none of them have the ends capped off to keep air in them.
My side imagine will show their shadows sometimes
I made some ten foot long 4" in diameter fish attractors out of PVC pipe. I drilled holes in the pipe and added 10 more 1" diamater pvc pipes going perpendicular to the larger pipe. It's shaped like a tree. I put some fun noodle foam in the top 2 ft of the 4" diamter pipe and then added concrete to the bottom part of the pipe where it's flanged. I cut the bottom off the 4" diamater pipe where it's flaired. I buried the pipe in the ground with the flaired in up. I poured the concrete mix inside that pipe, wiped the concrete off the flared part and then let it set up over night. I added some long screws into the side of the pipe and they were long enough to go into the concrete inside the pipe. The screws help to keep the concrete inside the pipe after the concrete dries. It's like making a concrete anchor.
When I take all the pipes out into the lake in my boat I assemble the smaller pipes into the holes of the larger pipe to make the branches of the PVC tree. I shoot some self-tapping screws on each side of 4" pipe into the 1" pipe to hold them and keep them from sliding out of the 4" pipe's holes. I end up with a 10 ft section of 1" pipe inserted into the 4" pipe and sticking out both sides by about 5 ft. When I'm ready to sink the PVC tree, I attach the bottom by gluing it together with the longer section of the 4" diameter pipe so that I end up with a 10 ft long 4" diameter pipe. I add some fun noodle foam in the top and then glue a 4" diameter PVC cap on the top and the top cap has a screw-in eye bolt. I can then attach a rope through the eye bolt and lower the entire unit down to the bottom to make sure that the tree stands straight up off the bottom. The fun noodle placed inside the top part of the tree helps it float at the top. The concrete in the bottom keeps it anchored to the bottom. I made a 75 ft long rope and tied it to the bank and used the boat to place the PVC tree in 17 ft of water. So the top is about 7 ft below the surface and I know exactly where the tree is located. I also use a handheld GPS unit to make the spot as a waypoint. I used my Humminbird 898 Ci SI unit to mark the spot too. Later I tried to find it using my sonar with 455 Hz sonar beams. It was hard to see on the sonar. I had to change the settings on my unit to only scan to one side and then shortened the distance on the sonar beam reading on the unit to see things better I changed the frequency to 800 Htz an finally got an image of the PVC tree on the display. It was not easy but I figured it all out. I placed several other PVC trees in the area so that in the fall of the year when boat traffic slows down I could fish from the bank and catch some crappie. I caught a few crappie on this spot over time. But one day I drove over to the lake and there were two women fishing in the spot. They had lawn chairs and were parked right where I would stand to fish from the bank. Every night I would drive over and unless I went early in the afternoon they would be there fishing where I put the PVC tree. I put these trees there so that others could catch some fish too. But I never expected someone to be fishing there every damn night. I finally stopped fishing due to other reasons.
Now as to why you can't see the PVC tree underwater. They are rounded and the sound waves hit at different angles and bounce off in different directions. The only sound waves that bounce straight back to the transducer hit the side of the PVC at a perfectly straight line on the nearest part of the rounded pipe. The rest of the sound waves reflect off at an angle where they don't go straight back to the transducer. So the transducer only sees a fraction of the beam that's bouncing off the side of the PVC pipe. It's like a stealth fighter jet that was designed to not reflect radar beams straight back to the radar receiver on the ground. Now I'm not sure if some of the sonar beams are absorbed by the PVC pipe. But the PVC trees that I made have water inside the 4" diameter pipe and then water inside the 1" diameter pipe. I'm wondering if putting some wood dowels inside the 1" diameter pipe might help with the sonar beams bouncing back to the transducer. But I fear that the shape of the PVC pipes has more to do with the PVC not reflecting the sound waves back in the right direction to the transducer. I did find that 800 kHz worked better than the 455 kHz. 800 kHz is a higher frequency which shows things better up close and the 455 kHz frequency reaches out further in the water.