Thread: Performance Testing of Natural Brush Pile, Bamboo, and PVC Condo's

PVC is difficult due to being round for sure, sonar pings goes down, and really doesn't have a flat surface to bounce back. So get's minimum return. Then when it gets a build up of alga, it has something to absorb the ping even more, making it that much harder.

We fish 3 different lakes, and it seems that one lake that has no timber in the lake. So, the Bamboo, and PVC due a much better job of holding fish on this lake than the other two that has a lot of timber in them. Seems like, given the choice, crappie will stick to what they have seem most. Lake with no natural cover, will hang on anything available. Just my thinking.


keith

Thank you for your report, very interesting read........ good to hear from someone who isn't pushing the pvc store bought porcupines.... we are doing a test ourselves here on Truman lake and so far the all Oak trees we make are the best, but we just got started, and have everything put out, cedars, pvc, pvc with oak, brush piles........ want to test this stuff for a year like you done before figuring out which one is best, but we are trying to attract the larger crappie.......

Originally Posted by olesilverside

Thank you for your report, very interesting read........ good to hear from someone who isn't pushing the pvc store bought porcupines.... we are doing a test ourselves here on Truman lake and so far the all Oak trees we make are the best, but we just got started, and have everything put out, cedars, pvc, pvc with oak, brush piles........ want to test this stuff for a year like you done before figuring out which one is best, but we are trying to attract the larger crappie.......

Try stakebeds or pallet stakebeds out of hardwood. They hang you up less and hold larger fish and fewer dinks here. Low end depthfinders do not show well either as everything is verticle. I like spacing of 1 ' or more on stakes. I've read that yo need a min of 8'' spacing on fish cover to allow fish access.

have tried the stakes and didn't do very good, we may not have put out enough, we used buckets with about 8 stakes each and put 4 ea in a area......... think a little over a pound and only one is the best they done.......

Hey nimrod you got any Picts of your beds before they went into the lake

One thing I am doing this year is adding hardwood untreated 2x4's with the PVC...sometimes I'll use a 4" PVC main pole, that is 5' tall and drill 1.5" holes on both sides every foot (for small fish?minnows to hide), then I'll add 6-8 of the 5' 2x4's. On others I use 3-4 pieces of wood as the center pole and then 2" PVC....We'll be placing these in groups of 5 with all Wood and all PVC "Trees", and each group gets a Minnow/Fry Condo that is made of 3 Plastic Milk Carton Crates with a block in the bottom one and all are cabled together...the top crate is upside down to create a "roof"!

We do not have to worry so much about the heat and providing shade like you southern guys...most of our Crappies are happy with just Vertical cover and they have been producing well...our lake is 2200 acres and divided in 4ths, The North 1/4th is 3-6 foot deep with some 10-12 foot holes, the middle 2/4ths is 10-15 and 10-25 feet deep, the Southern 1/4 is 15-45 feet deep. It is highly oxygenated, fertile, and stained.
We ARE now seeing a size and number increase because of the 9" size limit and 30 creel limit...along with all the new cover put in! What really helped speed this up is we have not had a shad die-off in over 5 years and they are spawning up to 5 different times in the summer...can you say fresh sushi for every size of fish!!!

Now that is a great post and well appreciated I'm sure.Thumbs Up I'm somewhat surprised about the bamboo though. I figured once the green top was gone the stalks would be easier to fish and would be holding more fish. Oh well....you did the work and have the proof. Thanks for sharing your experience of the different kinds of structures and their test results.

Originally Posted by gabowman

Now that is a great post and well appreciated I'm sure.Thumbs Up I'm somewhat surprised about the bamboo though. I figured once the green top was gone the stalks would be easier to fish and would be holding more fish. Oh well....you did the work and have the proof. Thanks for sharing your experience of the different kinds of structures and their test results.

You are right about the ease of fishing bamboo brush piles. The way we have it, it fishes very easy. It surprized us also. we fish 3 local lakes. 1 has NO timber of cover in lake at all. We have Bamboo in that lake, and it holds fish better than the other 2. The other lakes have a lot of timber, natural cover, in the lake. It has not been worth our while to put Bamboo or PVC in these 2 lakes.

So we are taking that to mean that the 2 lake that have natural cover in it, requires natural brush piles to attract fish. We pull up to a BIG natural lay down at these lakes and might catch a limit of fish without moving. The 1 lake with no cover, the crappie are just happy to have any kind of cover. we catch 10-15 crappie on a Bamboo Pile at this lake.


keith