I add my brush each spring and remove the brush after the spawn. You don't need a lot of brush to get good spawns when the egg ribbon has 8000-30000 eggs. Some will leave brush in all year in deeper water but deep you often can't see if you are getting eggs or not and how many eggs have been laid. I add shoreline brush each spring at ice out to control the number of egg strands that are allowed to hatch. Twiggy brush is best for perch. Some tree species have limbs with more twigs than others. I like small dogwood trees. Some have good luck with artificial Xmas tree branches. Real evergreen branches may also work okay.
Thanks Bill. This is exactly what I needed.. I'll have branches in at ice out. It's hard to tell how many YP I have. I may "not" want them to spawn. I may have stocked too many, but they've all but disappeared since I caught 30 early this fall. I thought there were 1,200 stocked, but I can't find a single one in a one acre pond. If i do have 1,170 left, maybe I should discourage any spawning activity?
