Thread: Sinking stake beds....

Originally Posted by fishordie

I'm with you on that one. I tried the pallets a long time ago and found out you need a lot of weight and man power. Driving the stakes in, is much easier.

With a 17' x48'' boat with decks it's easy setting pallets. I showed my neighbor having trouble and now he says its easy. One man job .

Originally Posted by NIMROD

With a 17' x48'' boat with decks it's easy setting pallets. I showed my neighbor having trouble and now he says its easy. One man job .

Do you put the stake bed out in the water first, then add your rocks? How do you keep one side from sinking, so that you can add rocks to the other side?
We need more hints on how to make this easy. I've connected a bunch of my PVC trees together to make sort of a diamond shape - but by the time I got it out of my boat, I had drifted off (they were pulling water) of where I intended for the structure to go. I had to go back with scuba gear to move it where I wanted it.
I attached one end of the structure with a rope and tied that to a cinder block I set on a pier. Then I used my remote control trolling motor to move my boat out until I could pull the cinder block off the pier. I had another cinder block on the other end of the diamond shape - but it was still pretty hard to get it out of the boat - and I had a piece of plywood on my boat to make it easier to slide off.

Originally Posted by fishingholebuilder

I had to go back with scuba gear to move it where I wanted it.

Question: Did you see fish using the structure (cover?)? And if you did how were they relating to it (i.e. suspend above, buried down in it, under the pvc limbs)?

Hey fishingholebuilder, I fish the same lake as NIMROD. He definately has the bugs worked out on putting out pallet beds but my Tracker PF-16 stick steer is not well suited for hauling out pallets.
Therefore, I have built a PVC stake driver per KrappieKrazy's specs and have been driving them right into the lakebed. So far my deepest bed is in 10 feet of water. Our lake is shallow and very muddy so I don't think that I will ever have to go any deeper than 15 feet.
I am still working on a good anchoring system to use while placing the beds but I have gotten some good ideas from some of the guys here.

Originally Posted by fishingholebuilder

Do you put the stake bed out in the water first, then add your rocks? How do you keep one side from sinking, so that you can add rocks to the other side?
We need more hints on how to make this easy. I've connected a bunch of my PVC trees together to make sort of a diamond shape - but by the time I got it out of my boat, I had drifted off (they were pulling water) of where I intended for the structure to go. I had to go back with scuba gear to move it where I wanted it.
I attached one end of the structure with a rope and tied that to a cinder block I set on a pier. Then I used my remote control trolling motor to move my boat out until I could pull the cinder block off the pier. I had another cinder block on the other end of the diamond shape - but it was still pretty hard to get it out of the boat - and I had a piece of plywood on my boat to make it easier to slide off.

I put pallet bed on the boat then add rocks inside corners of pallet. Make sure to balance rock weight even all corners. We place pallet so bottom boards are pointed out otherwise each board space will hang on rim of boat when pushing the overside.

Originally Posted by smashdn

Question: Did you see fish using the structure (cover?)? And if you did how were they relating to it (i.e. suspend above, buried down in it, under the pvc limbs)?

There were fish both in it and above it - the structure was in about 19 feet deep water, and I wound up not moving it as far as we had planned - because of the number of fish already holding on it.

Originally Posted by slabbandit

Hey fishingholebuilder, I fish the same lake as NIMROD. He definately has the bugs worked out on putting out pallet beds but my Tracker PF-16 stick steer is not well suited for hauling out pallets.
Therefore, I have built a PVC stake driver per KrappieKrazy's specs and have been driving them right into the lakebed. So far my deepest bed is in 10 feet of water. Our lake is shallow and very muddy so I don't think that I will ever have to go any deeper than 15 feet.
I am still working on a good anchoring system to use while placing the beds but I have gotten some good ideas from some of the guys here.

I bet this stake driver works really well. Most of the reseviors I've placed strucure on (and it's been a lot) have a thick layer of muck on the bottom and it seems to be pretty easy to drive a stake or tree into.