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Started By
Message
Let’s talk brush piles
Posted on 12/27/20 at 6:07 pm
Posted on 12/27/20 at 6:07 pm
Since it’s post Christmas that means materials for brush piles are easily accessible. For you baws who set up brush piles, what’s your process?
We sunk 4 trees at the camp last year on the edge of the main channel (13 ft) and haven’t caught a single fish on it. We tied some empty plastic bottles on a few to help them stand up right and had had two lay over.
Anything we can do to enhance our setup?
We sunk 4 trees at the camp last year on the edge of the main channel (13 ft) and haven’t caught a single fish on it. We tied some empty plastic bottles on a few to help them stand up right and had had two lay over.
Anything we can do to enhance our setup?
9
Posted on 12/27/20 at 7:09 pm to Drunken Crawfish
What type of fish are you trying to attract?
Posted on 12/27/20 at 7:11 pm to Drunken Crawfish
Oh yea. I got 3 trees already and gonna sink about 20 or 30 in false river in about 10 to 12ft. My buddy has a bunch of concrete test cylinders that we are going to use to sink them.
Posted on 12/27/20 at 7:12 pm to lsufan1971
White Perch or Bass ideally. But really anything that’ll bite. I am doing some research on a green light to put off the dock to try and attract fish to the area as well.
Posted on 12/27/20 at 7:22 pm to Head1
Feel free to post the coorindates of em
Most brush we've seen out there is under 10ft depth wise, finding deeper water to put em in might pay off well since it's not common
Most brush we've seen out there is under 10ft depth wise, finding deeper water to put em in might pay off well since it's not common
Posted on 12/27/20 at 7:25 pm to Drunken Crawfish
We have a couple of underwater green lights at our dock and they definitely help catch fish at night, but they won't help you whatsoever catch them during the day(in fact it could hurt your fishing during the daytime since they've got a buffet of bait circling at night). Best thing to do with brush is find an area/stretch where there are fish, and put the pile there. Brush is more so about narrowing a good stretch of fishing area than it is bringing fish into an area. We put most of ours in 7ft so that it can be fished with a crankbait and soft plastic, plus that's around the outer depth of most piers in the area.
Posted on 12/28/20 at 4:35 am to Drunken Crawfish
Not familiar with brush piles in natural bodies of water but I would think they'd be the same as in a COE lake and they are magnets if done properly in a COE lake. When I was a young man I would collect ALL of the christmas trees I could get starting the day after christmas and would take piles of them out on an old pontoon boat I bought in part just for doing this. I would place them on main lake points and in and around channel bends....noticeable ones with deeper water on the outside of the bend and shallower water on the inside of the bend...and would place them at varying depths so they would hold bait year round. I would work on this most of January....and most of the brush piles would have fish on them in a couple of days...they work best if they are standing upright but they will work lying on their sides...this was before GPS so I would have to triangulate their location and find them with a flasher but they flat out worked. Its a lot of work to do it properly.
The Georgia DNR used to encourage people dropping christmas trees in boat ramp parking lots and would have a couple of work days in January where folks would volunteer to haul them and sink them....I don't think the DNR does this anymore but in the 70's and 80's it was an annual event....
The closest I ever came to getting caught breaking a game law was cutting hardwood trees down to fall into a COE lake....I had no idea this was illegal as it was very common in the 1970's....hardwood trees work better, in my experience, than evergreens....but are much harder to work with than a 6 foot tall christmas tree.
There is a well known striper guide on Clarks Hill Lake on the Savannah River who has, for years, hauled HUGE hardwood trees out on the lake and sunk them....he makes no secret of this and the way they do it couldn't keep it a secret if they wanted to...hard to miss a 30 foot tall oak tree being delivered to a boat ramp on a flat bed semi truck and trailer and then being towed by several boats across a lake....the locations of these trees is well known....all you gotta do is follow most of the striper guides on the lake to find them....they have been doing this for YEARS...there are probably 300 of these trees AT least...and the flat out attract and hold fish....
The Georgia DNR used to encourage people dropping christmas trees in boat ramp parking lots and would have a couple of work days in January where folks would volunteer to haul them and sink them....I don't think the DNR does this anymore but in the 70's and 80's it was an annual event....
The closest I ever came to getting caught breaking a game law was cutting hardwood trees down to fall into a COE lake....I had no idea this was illegal as it was very common in the 1970's....hardwood trees work better, in my experience, than evergreens....but are much harder to work with than a 6 foot tall christmas tree.
There is a well known striper guide on Clarks Hill Lake on the Savannah River who has, for years, hauled HUGE hardwood trees out on the lake and sunk them....he makes no secret of this and the way they do it couldn't keep it a secret if they wanted to...hard to miss a 30 foot tall oak tree being delivered to a boat ramp on a flat bed semi truck and trailer and then being towed by several boats across a lake....the locations of these trees is well known....all you gotta do is follow most of the striper guides on the lake to find them....they have been doing this for YEARS...there are probably 300 of these trees AT least...and the flat out attract and hold fish....
Posted on 12/28/20 at 5:26 am to Drunken Crawfish
Brush piles are a lot of work. I live on an East Texas lake. I can assure you here they work. I have them around my dock and out in the lake. Your best per fish investment is for crappie. If you placing for bass, keep them concentrated in one area. You don't want to disperse fish around a small area like a dock. You want to concentrate them. I put them in a five gallon bucket with concrete and then drop them bucket down (which is about the only way you can drop those heavy things). They will stand up. For bass you may want them to lay down. Lately I've sunk them using sand bags. Finally I've moved now to bamboo and cinder blocks. Mix wet concrete and place into block holes and the eight to ten bamboo four or five foot tips into the wet concrete. Let dry and drop and mark your waypoint.
All of it is a lot of work ad it will tear a boat up if you're not careful. And we all spend a lot of money on our boats. I'm now catching crappie on my 30 deep brush piles.
Christmas trees are fine.
All of it is a lot of work ad it will tear a boat up if you're not careful. And we all spend a lot of money on our boats. I'm now catching crappie on my 30 deep brush piles.
Christmas trees are fine.
Posted on 12/28/20 at 8:40 am to Drunken Crawfish
I have a new plan since the stuff foot and I sunk isn't working. I am going to fill small painting buckets with quickcrete. I will then tie the trees or brush together too to stump/side by side. I will then sink those with two of the buckets with a slight slant horizontally. May work on the project this weekend.
Posted on 12/28/20 at 8:58 am to AlxTgr
When’s the last time you tried them? Thinking about hitting mine again soon just to see if any change. I’ll probably wait for a warm afternoon.
Posted on 12/28/20 at 9:01 am to Drunken Crawfish
Don't know why you didn't catch fish on them, unless you don't normally catch fish in that area. If you do, then they should have worked.
Used to sink 20-30 trees every 2 years at my grandparents place within casting distance of the pier. This was in 6-10 ft of water. They don't hold fish all year but during certain times of the year, they would be full of fish. We would put cinder blocks (1 or 2 depending on tree size) in the middle and the trees would lay down. Another tip is to cut holes in the trees. Over time, the silt attaches to the trees and if you don't have holes in them, the fish have no where to hide. Another tip I've heard but never done it to tie a can of wet dog food with holes poked in it to the tree. The dog food attracts baitfish which attracts the predator fish.
Used to sink 20-30 trees every 2 years at my grandparents place within casting distance of the pier. This was in 6-10 ft of water. They don't hold fish all year but during certain times of the year, they would be full of fish. We would put cinder blocks (1 or 2 depending on tree size) in the middle and the trees would lay down. Another tip is to cut holes in the trees. Over time, the silt attaches to the trees and if you don't have holes in them, the fish have no where to hide. Another tip I've heard but never done it to tie a can of wet dog food with holes poked in it to the tree. The dog food attracts baitfish which attracts the predator fish.
quote:Do something similar to this now behind the house. Wife has a cat, so the cat litter bins work perfect to fill with quickcrete and set the bottom of the tree in. Also have used them with some 4" pvc pipe as the trunk and 1/2" pvc through the 4" as limbs. PVC tree lasts forever.
I am going to fill small painting buckets with quickcrete.
Posted on 12/28/20 at 9:21 am to LSUengr
I use flexible innerduct and tie the plastic bags of dog food to them to establish some bait fish around them.
Posted on 12/28/20 at 10:38 am to SCwTiger
quote:Been a while. We need to go in my boat to "look" at them. I can go pretty much any day this week.
When’s the last time you tried them? Thinking about hitting mine again soon just to see if any change. I’ll probably wait for a warm afternoon.
Posted on 12/28/20 at 10:54 am to LSUengr
quote:
Do something similar to this now behind the house. Wife has a cat, so the cat litter bins work perfect to fill with quickcrete and set the bottom of the tree in. Also have used them with some 4" pvc pipe as the trunk and 1/2" pvc through the 4" as limbs. PVC tree lasts forever.
Those square kitty litter buckets are an outdoors man's dream....perfect tackle boxes, perfect for cast nets...I never used one as a base for a brush pile but they would work and are cheaper than 5 gallon buckets.....
Posted on 12/28/20 at 10:58 am to aTmTexas Dillo
quote:
All of it is a lot of work ad it will tear a boat up if you're not careful. And we all spend a lot of money on our boats. I'm now catching crappie on my 30 deep brush piles.
Christmas trees are fine.
There ain't no easy way that I am aware of to drop a 6 foot tall, dried up christmas tree over the side of a boat with a bucket of concrete attached to the base....its damned hard work but it is worth the effort in my experience. If you can find someone with a pontoon boat its a lot easier and you can set a bunch of them....but it is still messy and will usually result in at least some damage....
Posted on 12/28/20 at 11:21 am to Drunken Crawfish
I sank this and it doesn’t hold crappie.
It also may help for me to know how to crappie fish.
I put tennis balls on the end so no one would impale themselves off the dock.
It also may help for me to know how to crappie fish.
I put tennis balls on the end so no one would impale themselves off the dock.
This post was edited on 12/28/20 at 11:22 am
Posted on 12/28/20 at 1:27 pm to Head1
quote:
My buddy has a bunch of concrete test cylinders that we are going to use to sink them.
these are great, another option is a concrete core from a coring contractor. they are pretty easy to get if you know somebody.
we epoxy in an eyebolt
Posted on 12/28/20 at 7:09 pm to Drunken Crawfish
I've never seen Christmas trees be that productive unless there was a bunch of them. The fish can't get in the tree and wait on prey.
Posted on 12/28/20 at 7:40 pm to offshoretrash
The fish I caught all summer were suspended all around the brush from just on top to near the bottom on the sides.
Posted on 12/28/20 at 9:33 pm to John_V
quote:
We have a couple of underwater green lights at our dock and they definitely help catch fish at night
One thing I learned about the lights is to fish a big worm really slow on the far outside edges of the light. That's where the big fish are
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