Quote Originally Posted by Crappie Buster View Post
Not meaning to ruffle any feathers, but anyone that questions the sentiment of the guide in the video has probably not put in much brush.... sinking brush is a pile of work and I believe if you consider yourself a brush pile fisherman then you too should sink brush. I’m not talking about fishing the occasional pile found or fishing a dock with brush. If you find one fish it, but help out the cause and sink some of your own. Don’t be a lazy fisherman. Couple caveats to my opinion are folks unable to put in the work due to age or physical limitations but those are few and far between.

Once it hits the water it’s public domain. That’s a fact. But if you’ve ever sunk brush and not been able to fish it because others are on it or others have fished all week and cleaned it off while you were at work, you’d understand why people get testy.

Not much different than a garden. Could you imagine planting and working a garden and then have others get the majority of the crop!?! It happens in the brush pile world

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Well I'll play devil's advocate (I hate that term) for the sake of discussion....

So every "new" lake a fisherman visits, he should sink a brush pile so he'll have a place to fish? Even lakes in other states he only gets to visit a few times a year? Seems somewhat of an impractical undertaking IMO, outside of your home lake.
Sure, if I put in a brush pile only to find someone else fishing it, would admittedly be a bit irritating. But that's ultimately my problem. That's why I build multiple piles on my home lake. If someone's on one, I go to another spot.

As far as the garden analogy, I don't personally know of, nor have I ever heard of anyone planting a garden on public land. But if they did and "the public" helped themselves, the crop is, after all public domain. Certainly no professional farmer would dream of trying to earn a living off public land, even though fishing guides do earn their living off public water. (And no, I have no problem with that and have used guides myself)

But ultimately, for clarity, the insinuation was anyone "fishing another man's brush pile" lacked something in the ethical/character department. My specific question was, "is fishing a pile of brush underwater that you didn't put there in some way wrong?", as this person insinuated. I believe the overall consensus is, once you put brush into a public lake it's no longer YOUR brush pile.