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Well starting this afternoon I'm going to be building some PVC condos to sink this weekend. This is my first attempt at doing them, but I've read a LOT from everyone on here and think I just might have it figured out.
I will post pics once I have them built and if you all would, feedback would be great! I will post my progress from building to fishing them. Thanks in advance for the feedback and help!
Here is a video I made on building different type of condos... hope this helps...
YouTube - ‪Building Crappie Structure‬‏
Great vid! I'm gonna keep my eye out for some wood strips like in the vid to make some stakebeds and some of the buckets like you did.
Thanks for sharing that Vid...It was great and Once again I've learned more!!! I really liked the wooden stake condos. Here is a question about those...How often do you get snagged up on the wood? I know with PCV a snag isn't really going to happen. Thats why I went with the PVC insted of the wood. Which do you think would work best?
I think wood!Quote:
Originally Posted by IronheadIL
I almost never hang the sticks.... I hang the lip of the bucket... no problem... drop your weight a couple of time and hook is dislodged.... No problem.... The stick condos are very easy to build... I get several ready then mix the concrete, let em set 24 hrs and they are ready for the water... I put 12 to each location, almost all of of my locations are on drop offs... One row of 6 then another row behind the first row with 6 and call the crappie.... If you dont have Down/Scan they are very hard to locate with a regular graph.... Which is good for me....
Here is what they look like on Down/Scan...
http://i999.photobucket.com/albums/a...n/shot15-1.png
http://i999.photobucket.com/albums/a...xan/shot22.png
Here is a few I made in my yard.....
http://i999.photobucket.com/albums/a...n/DSCN0256.jpg
Where do you get all those sticks?Quote:
Originally Posted by CrappieTexan
I get the sticks from a company that makes wood trim of all kinds. 95% is hardwood, the rest Pine. This is sticks that they throw away, they are 16 ft long and I cut em up in 4 ft lengths & make stick condos. About 30% of the sticks are too small so they are discarded & I use the rest. The best part is they are FREE and they load em for me with a forklift and the rest is history. I have made well over 300 stick condos and catch plenty of crappie off them. Here is a photo of one load I got.
http://i999.photobucket.com/albums/a...n/DSCN0218.jpg
How do you get them placed in rows so accurately?
ok...I've got three done now. Had to wait for the rain to let off a bit before I could do them. I will have pics to post by tomorrow. The three I did if place in a Tirangle should cover an area of about 8 feet. Now I know this isn't to much...but I'm still trying to get everthing just right. Starting with small scale than working up from there! The first three I've done are PVC, I think I will work on a wood batch next and compare the two.
Thanks to everyone for their input and help so far!!!
Peepaw I'm liking your sytem, my drops aren't accurate worth a flip, I've just been dropping a pile in a location and hoping for the best.
Ok...the darn things have finally dried!!! Take a look and please give some feed back. I am sinking these this afternoon and will fish them in about two weeks for the first test!
Attachment 56663
looks good to me
hope you scuffed up the pvc, it not the algae will have a very hard time growing on them. Other than that they look great. I plan on making some this year also.
nope to sanding the PVC...I thought about that but didn't do it. So you've had much better luck with doing it that way?
Algae can grab into the grain in wood. Not on PVC. It will eventually build up but it takes much longer.
So how long is much longer???
peepaw: How do you get them placed in rows so accurately?
Most of my locations are on drop offs. I mark the drop off with 2 bouys about 25 ft apart. I use my TM to keep me in line on the drop off and drop a row of 6 stick condos, then put another row behind the first row....
Here is some stick condo on a secondary drop off....
http://i999.photobucket.com/albums/a...exan/shot6.png
Here is another location in the mouth of a cove that crappie spawn in....
http://i999.photobucket.com/albums/a...xan/shot22.png
Hope this helps.... Crappie love the stick condos... they normally hold at the base of the condos on the drop off side.....
peepaw:
How do you get them placed in rows so accurately?
I have a Lowrance HDS 10 with Structure Scan... Most of my locations are on drop offs. I mark the drop off with 2 bouys along the drop off about 25 ft apart. I use my TM to hold me in line with the bouys as I drop the condos. I put 6 in a row and then another row behind that one.... Crappie hold at the base of the condos on the drop off side... The most crappie I have caught on one location was 71.... it was early summer and there were lots of dinks... as the weather got hotter the bigger one started holding there.... I like the condos because I do not get hung up like on a brushpile.....
ok...We went out and fished them about three days ago and caugt a few nice ones. Two at 12 and one at 13". No small ones as of yet. The water temp was about 60 but now there has been a cold front that just doesn't want to pass. I think the little ones are still a bit deeper along with the other bigger ones. This afternoon the wife and I are going to attemp some of the wooden slat condos and sink them some time this week. Again, I will post pics of the finshed condos and let everyone know how they are in a coupld weeks when we go back and fish them!
Why not just fill the bucket halfway full of crete, and shove the sticks in? Seeing that cloud of cement dust you were breathing in mixing in the bucket at the 8 minute mark made me cringe. I hate to think that you are doing that hundreds of times, and indoors with no breeze. Good fishing.
Ok...Here are some of the wood ones we did last night. Plan to dump these and let them set for about two weeks before we try to fish them. I figure if we dump them ten yards from the PVC ones and see which ones will work betterAttachment 58302!Attachment 58301
Has anyone applied a relese agent to the buckets to reuse them? I was just thinking that it would be cheaper and cleaner.
Quote:
Originally Posted by buck_jackson75
someone said use bags and the buckets would come ritght off.
What bags are you talking about?
don't remember exactly. maybe small trash bags. put them in the bucket then put your cement and sticks in. when it sets they say the buckets will slide off.
I did try this with the bags...it works but not as easy as one might think. The nice part about it is that you can save and reuse your buckets. Bad part is it takes a LOT longer and you have to fight to get the bag out of the bucket...just using the bucket is quick and easy!!!
we looked at all kinds of buckets. Try landscape pots, usually free. Some guys dig a hole and bank pour without a bucket. We found that without a container of some type, they get chipped and make a mess before sinking.
I remeber first time I made stake bed/buckets. Not enough cement and all that wood floats like a bobber. Ended up busting off half of what I worked so hard to make just to get it to sink!
You can see we use larger sizes of draintile pipe. Hit up local plumbing/sewer water,septic guys. They all seem to have cutoffs they will give you.
Water level on lake low enough to see the tops of my PVC condos. They have been in 8 months. They have considerable algae growth on them. I was worried that since I didn't prep PVC as everybody has suggested algae wouldn't grow.
I mentioned previously that I use Walmart sacks in the slick shrub buckets. The concrete releases reasonably well. I am starting to fill the Walmart sacks 3/4 full of sand then cap off with sakrete on my spider blocks. A spider block is simply a shrub bucket with 4-5 pieces of 1" poly pipe 3-4' long cemented in.
I am using the ribbed shrub bucket for my spider blocks and I am not recycling them.
Sweet deal with the free hardwood. Heck, they already got them ripped to size for you!! Good deal!