Stake Beds As Crappie Concentrators

In 1968 fisheries personnel of the Tennessee Game and Fish Commission began constructing and evaluating stake beds made of sawmill strips as tools to help fishermen harvest more crappie from Kentucky Reservoir. They are: hammer d riven type; driver driven type; portable pre-fab type. Crappie concentrate readily on all three types with variations occurring due to location and seasonal fish movement. Over 128 hours of documented fishing on stake beds by the author produced 6.6 crappie per hour as opposed to 1.8 crappie per hour on control cover areas. A five year mean for crappie fishermen on the same reservoir is 0.998 crappie per hour.