Ewest, just a note on my success with gravel spawning beds.
I built an area specifically for spawning with water from 2-5 or so feet deep and lined the bottom with various size gravel. The first year it was not used at all and the FA grew in it something terrible. I drug a lot of it out with a rake. The second year I used a backhoe and deepened the near shore part thinking the fish were not using it.
But that year (I think maybe because the BG males were bigger????) they used the shallow gravel area a lot. Not the part near shore I dug out of course, but the rest of the area was filled with BG nests. I actually got some video of them on the nests in the summer.
So my point to the post is, just because your spawning area does not get used right away, does not mean it will never get used. Don't know if it was just different conditions in a different year, or maybe my BG males got big enough to overcome the FA starting to grow from the bottom. But they used the area all spring, summer and fall this last year.
Last edited by snrub; 01/17/16 07:49 PM.
