“As a result, many anglers sink brushpiles, and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has gotten involved as well. We feel the structures have become more than fish attractors; they can aid spawning success by providing cover for young fish. Elm makes a nice pile, but those trees quickly rot, as do gum trees. We’ve discovered that bamboo or what’s locally called giant cane makes a fine, long-lasting attractor.
“We call them crappie condos, as crevices among bamboo stalks give young fish plenty of places to hide. Bamboo structures, in the water over four years now, are still providing cover and producing fish. Giant cane is native and plentiful in the area and when you harvest it, the plant grows to useable size within a year, so we have a steady supply.
“Crappie condos include 20 freshly cut bamboo stalks 12 to 15 feet tall, anchored with a 5-gallon bucket of QuickCrete. As we can carry 8 condos on a pontoon boat, we build and sink them in sets of 8.” They also build and place horizontal piles for spawning habitat and to replicate fallen shoreline trees.
Crappies spawn around this shallow cover, and newly hatched fry hide within. “The Game and Fish Commission has started providing us the material to make them,” Blake adds, “and we estimate we’ve planted about 240,000 cubic feet of bamboo cover in Greeson. In 2007, we planted 314 attractors.” (For specifics of bamboo building and photographs, check Jerry Blake’s website, actionfishingtrips.com.)
When not building or planting piles, Blake and Morris fish their bamboo attractors with poles and jigs. When crappies move shallow, starting around the end of February with water temperatures rising into the low to mid-50°F range, they find the fish immediately around certain piles. A hot bite occurs around the spawn, which typically occurs from late March into early April in creek arms and later in the main lake.
Instead of the popular tube jig, they’ve found best success with hair jigs, rigged with and without a small slipfloat. “Slater’s Jigs builds some fine ones of bucktail and kiptail, which is calf tail,” Morris reports. “The hair has a subtle, natural action you can’t get with plastic. We like ’em small for dipping into these piles, no heavier than 1/16-ounce. The 12-foot super-sensitive B ’n’ M Sam Heaton rod is ideal, matched with a Shakespeare or Pflueger ultralight reel. “Crappies get in bamboo in just a couple feet of water, and we fish jigs above them—not more than 6 inches deep, in many cases. Raise the tip of the pole to slowly pull the jig along, up, and over bamboo stalks then down into the pockets.
“I tell clients, ’Give it to ’em then take it away’. When crappies see it moving away, they rush out and engulf the little jig and you can watch the action.”
The guides report that Greeson’s populations of black and white crappies are very healthy right now, with good numbers of 15-inch fish and occasional specimens over 17 inches. Two factors have contributed: abundant threadfin shad and manmade habitat.
Pole time is here, so let’s be pitchin’ and doodlin’ and dippin’, enjoying some tasty crappie dinners—and of course, releasing slabs for the future.
*Ned Kehde, Lawrence, Kansas, is an In-Fisherman Field Editor and frequent contributor.
