Reply With QuoteI have known Gene Gilliland for many years, he is primarily a bass fisherman, but he is a fine biologist and sure knows his stuff.
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Here is a part of an article on structure.
This study agrees with my findings on Nimrod. Bigger Crappie perfer more open habitat made of natural materials. I don't use Christmas trees and perfer more open trees like Persimmon. My theory on PVC is also the same, fish use it lots of time cause that's all is there. Also I tell folks you can over fish structures, they are just like baiting Deer. You are building killing fields more than helping the resource, especially on lakes with little or no cover.
Structure Shapes And Material
With decades of projects behind him, Houser is convinced that natural material (i.e. wood and rock rubble) is superior to plastic and rubber.
“The greatest benefit of wood over plastic and rubber is the ability to degrade,” he says. “We want to provide positive fish habitat that lasts just long enough, rather than forever.”
His work has demonstrated that during the prespawn and post-spawn period, adult panfish prefer more open cover. On the other hand, juvenile crappie desire something that is very dense and bushy.Houser points to upright Christmas trees as one of the best man-introduced covers for crappie. They start out with bushy cover for juveniles, but as the tree degrades, it leaves a vertical pole structure that adult crappie like. And it does not last forever.
In Oklahoma, Gilliland says his agency has also studied habitat materials. In the 1980s, a staff researcher looked at preferences of bass and crappie to different brush. He found that crappie preferred cedars, while bass preferred oaks. The researcher theorized that spacing between the branches was the key. Crappie like the tighter spaces of the cedar, while bass like the more open architecture of the oak.
In the 1990s, a graduate student working with the ODWC did a thesis on the relative merits of brushpiles made from cedars, oaks and plastic material called Geo-Web. He found that crappie preferred the cedars, while bass liked the oaks, and that both fish preferred wood over plastic structures.
Gilliland stresses that it’s not that plastic structures are ineffective, but they just do not work as well as wood.
“In barren areas of a lake where you do not have any kind of cover, anything you put in will attract fish, and that includes plastic structures like PVC pipe, Geo-Web or even orange snow fence,” he says. “But they will not attract the number of fish that natural brush will.”
Research done in the 1980s found that crappie also preferred vertical structure to horizontal structures. Height off the bottom was more attractive than the area of bottom-hugging coverage.
“Our agency uses the abundant eastern red cedar and sinks hundreds of brushpiles each year as crappie attractors,” explains Gilliland. “They last six to seven years compared to Christmas trees that last about one season.”
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I have known Gene Gilliland for many years, he is primarily a bass fisherman, but he is a fine biologist and sure knows his stuff.
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thats a good read nimrod thanks for posting it
Slabmaster II
Thats what worries me about the bucket beds. The buckets last forever. If everybody started dropping buckets the whole dang lake would be full. now I have dropped a few myself but I'm gonna fix me a driver and start driving WOOD stakes. I thinks thats more responsible. Just my opinion,thanks.
God is good...all the time.:D
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I still believe bamboo is great type of cover for crappie...I am not expert..But, there is a lot of lakes that lack cover in deeper water...So, something is better than nothing..
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I usually leave the leaves on the bamboo when we drop em in the water...Eventually the leaves will fall off and will create more room for bigger crappie...The bamboo concrete wire condos we dropped last year....We had some luck on them...Mostly we caught dinks..But, again this lake is loaded with dinks...So, maybe this coming fishing season the bigger crappie will be on our condos..
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But, I agree wood probably is the best cover...
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The longevity of ANY woods submerged depends on A- the type of wood, ie," hard woods " (cedar, locust, oak, mulberry, osage orange, ash, hickory, ect) simply outlast "soft woods' (pine, Christmas trees, poplar, maple, cotton wood, ect) and B- the fertility of the water they go into; even a Christmas tree going into a gravel pit (semi- to infertile water- no to little sediments ) CAN outlast a hard wood going into a very fertile body of water, like a swamp. C- the depth it rests at; most larger or spring fed bodies of water develope a thermocline, a distinct boundary where surface waters are warmer in the summer, and the deeper water is cooler AND has less oxygen content in parts per billion. Some deeper or bottom waters can actually be anoxic- almost devoid of disolved oxygen, therefore slowing down decay to a crawl compared to shallower waters in the same lake; 50- 100+ or deeper can make an ENORMOUS difference. Plus, the deeper the wood is, the less organisms that can "feed" on it, bacteria, slimes, fungus, snails, insect larvae, ect...there are MANY variables. If you wish to, consider the submerged wood a "slow release food capsile" that actually is eventually converted into fish, although there are afew twists and turns along the way...this does not take into account the fact that many fish both feed on or near cover, that they spawn on it and/ or use it as cver to avoid becoming something else`s meal...and personally prefere cedar because #1- it will last a LONG time and #2- because it provides both spawning cover AND denser cover for juvinille fish AND if assembled with overhang will PROMISE where there is prey...almost no fresh water fish are born 9-10" long...
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Lowellturner- Excellant post and right on the money. I do not mean to jack your post but dissolved oxygen is measured in parts per million not parts per billion.
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You are correct, my bad, sir, humbily stand corrected...and thank you!
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