Spacing of Structure

While the choices of materials used to make crappie beds are many I think one of the common and most important things to remember is proper spacing between your materials.

There should be a minimum of about 8 inches of space between your limbs or PVC for the crappie to get in and move around in the structure. Take a look at most PVC beds that people build. I'm guilty too of building them in tall buckets forcing the PVC to be too close together.

Try to use short containers such as cut off buckets or wash pans so you can get the maximum spread on the PVC arms or whatever material that you are using.

The best beds that I have built or found all have two things in common.

(1) The brushpile has some height to it. Coming up a minimum of 4 to 6 feet off of the bottom.

(2) They all have good spacing between the limbs for the bigger crappie to move in and around.

I FEEL THE SAME WAY. iF STRUCTURE IS NOT SPACED ENOUGH IT'S NOT GOOD. LARGER FISH NEED ROOM TO MOVE OR THEY WILL USE THE EDGES ONLY AND IT'S A WASTE. AT TIMES THEY WANT TO BURY UP IN THE MIDDLE OF COVER.

When spacing multiple condos in the same location how much spacing do you like to give. I have just lucked out & ran across a bunch of PVC on my new project.
How many condos due you usually put in one location for the deep winter beds

I perfer multiple beds verses real large ones. Only so many crappie in a given area. Too large and your hunting the cover for the grouped fish. The more locations the better. That's my .02 cents worth. I want lots of good spots as fish move. Large Condos are easily found and taken over by local fishermen. If you have a few large condos and fishing pressure is heavy ,some times you will not have a spot to fish.:rolleyes:

I agree with NIMROD that a small brushpile is harder for other people to luck up and find and easier to find the fish that are holding on it. I accidentally messed up a good piece of brush that used to produce several nice fish by saturating the area with several other trees.

Now the area has too much structure to fish at one time and the fish are not concentrated enough to catch a lot when I fish there.

Slabbandit hit it on the head. If you have a spot that holds big fish DO NOT put 10 trees next to it thinking that will just attract 10X that many. Several of my best places have been ruined by wannabe's putting brush every 100 feet, all around it. All they did was see me fishing a bare bank, no CLUE as to why I only fished one spot every 1/2 mile.

I usually build tops out of bamboo in 5 gallon buckets with sacrete, I will put 3 in an area (far offshore) and space them about 10 feet apart in a triangle. On windy days the fish will be on the top that is facing the wind, on calm days in the center of the three tops will hold most of the fish.

IF YOU WANT, TAKE A LOOK AT OUR WEB SITE AT WWW.JANDJHABITAT.COM
A DIVER FRIEND OF MINE TELLS ME THAT MORE AND BIGGER CRAPPIE ARE
ATTRACTED TO ATTRACTORS WHERE THE "LIMBS" ARE SPACED APART,
JUST LIKE THE OTHER GUYS SAID. IF YOU HAVE A LOT OF LIMBS, LIKE I
USED TO USE, CLOSE TOGETHER THERE IS NO PLACE FOR THE CRAPPIE TO GET INBETWEEN, ESPECIALLY ON WEATHER CHANGES, OR JUST WHEN THEY WANT TO. JUST A THOUGHT

JOHN B.