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Art Lander’s Outdoors: Fish attractor program creating hotspots of activity for Kentucky’s anglers


Fishery crews of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR), often working with conservation partners, have been placing fish attractors in public waters across the state since the late 1970s.

The program was started because over time it became obvious that as our major lakes aged, much of the wood structure was rotting away.

Map of fish attractors at Cave Run Lake (Photo from KDFWR)

Placing fish attractors creates hotspots of fish activity and great habitat for game fishes. Depending on the depth and location of the fish attractors, they attract a wide range of game fish, including sunfish, black bass and crappie, as well as their prey, small forage fish and invertebrates that are crucial for a thriving ecosystem.

Knowing the general location of these habitat structures and then being able to find them with electronics, is a big advantage for anglers fishing unfamiliar waters. It gives them a place to start where they know there will be concentrations of game fish.

In the last decade Kentucky’s fish attractor program has grown considerably, and as of the spring of 2021 fish attractors have been placed in 37 lakes, including 18 major lakes.

A fish attractor page was added to the department’s website in 2010. There’s a list of the lakes with fish attractors on the KDFWR website at fw.ky.gov

Clicking on the named link will take you to a Google Maps page showing the fish attractors for that lake. Clicking on the icon for each fish attractor will give anglers information on the fish attractor’s location (its latitude and longitude), and type.

Clicking on the GPX File Download will allow anglers to download a GPS Exchange file for importing the habitat waypoints into a depth finder with GPS or a GPS unit.

Most fish attractor sites are not marked by buoys.

Building fish Attractors

Much of the work of building and placing fish attractors is done during the winter months when lakes are drawn down to winter pool, their lowest water levels of the year, which exposes miles of shoreline, especially in shallow embayments.

Used Christmas trees are collected each year and repurposed as fish attractors. (Photo from KDFWR)

Through the years a fleet of equipment has been assembled for use by KDFWR crews in the state’s seven fishery districts.

This includes a habitat barge with a hydraulic bed, used to dump piles of rock or tree limbs, brush and recycled Christmas trees, tied together and weighted with concrete blocks.

Other equipment used to set fish attractors are large pontoon boats, telescoping forklifts. and skidders, four-wheel-drive tractors used to haul logs or large tree limbs over rough terrain.

The fish attractors are placed where fish spawn, and areas where they stage, in the spring and fall, before coming up to the banks in shallow water. This includes main lake points and flats near creek channels.

The building of fish attractors by fishery crews ramps up after the beginning of the New Year.

The kickoff event is the annual Christmas for the Fishes program, in which donated live cut Christmas trees are recycled for fish habitat. After Christmas, for about three weeks, KDFWR accepts natural Christmas trees at about 30 drop-off locations across the state, in 26 counties in six fishery districts.

Nearly 4,500 trees are donated each year. Trees must be free of all lights, tinsel, ornaments and any other decorations. Limbs, wreaths, brush or other plants are not accepted.

Types of Fish Attractors

KDFWR employees prepare to deploy stake buckets as fish attractors. (Photo from KDFWR)

Fish attractors vary depending on the available materials and goals. Types of fish attractors include:

• Weighted brush piles/reefs: Local brush/trees are gathered and weighted with concrete blocks.

• Stake beds/buckets: Arrays of vertical stakes are grouped together in shallow water.

• Hinge Cuts: Shoreline trees cut partway through with their tops in the water.

• Log Piles: Larger tree trunks and branches weighted with concrete blocks.

• Pallet Stacks: Stacked arrangements of wooden pallets wired together and weighted.

• Plastic Structures: Various structures constructed of PVC pipe or plastic pallets, which last a long time.

In recent years the emphasis has been on creating larger fish attractors concentrations and long reefs because they attract more fish, and using feedback from local anglers to fine-tune the location of fish attractors, and what types of fish attractors are most effective for certain species of game fish, at a given lake.

It is legal for anglers to place their own brush piles in Kentucky’s major lakes, but anglers must contact the lake manager’s office, or district fishery biologist, before doing the work.

Lakes have different depth requirements for fish attractors to prevent them from becoming navigation hazards, and some areas on lakes are off-limits, such as near boat ramps or swimming beaches.

Fish Finders with GPS

Global Positioning System (GPS) started as a U.S. Department of Defense project in 1973.

A GPS-enabled Garmin STRIKER Vivid 4cv fish finder (Photo courtesy of Garmin)

Civilian use was allowed in the 1980s, following an executive order from President Ronald Reagan.

There are several advantages to anglers of having a fish finder with GPS capability.

Number one is being able to find an exact location, by latitude and longitude, of a place you want to fish. Latitudes are east-west lines and longitudes run north-south. These geographical coordinates, measured in degrees and minutes, precisely locate any point on the surface of the earth within a few feet.

Fishfinders with GPS capability vary greatly in size and cost, from about $200 to more than $2,000.

Some enable anglers to load maps of lakes and chart a course, where the boat is now and the fishing destination. Other capabilities include saving a location fished, and showing temperature gradients, to find the thermocline, which is important to locating suspended fish.

To catch fish anglers must first find them. Kentucky’s fish attractor program goes a long way towards accomplishing that goal, while in the process helping aquatic ecosystems thrive and benefitting game fish populations.

Art Lander Jr. is outdoors editor for KyForward. He is a native Kentuckian, a graduate of Western Kentucky University and a life-long hunter, angler, gardener and nature enthusiast. He has worked as a newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and author and is a former staff writer for Kentucky Afield Magazine, editor of the annual Kentucky Hunting & Trapping Guide and Kentucky Spring Hunting Guide, and co-writer of the Kentucky Afield Outdoors newspaper column.

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