Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Bluegill vs Redear spawning areas

I read where a professional outdoor writer stated that he had the most luck finding redear spawning beds on hard surfaces as opposed to bluegill on softer surfaces.
Does that mesh with your findings?
If one wanted to focus on redear vs bluegill, is it then better to leave spawning areas as just hard clay?

Hard clay is better for both. They both try to avoid mucky inflow areas. Here is a pic of a RES using a bed also used by BG.

Nice pics, ewest! Good thing your RES really brighten up that red ear flap during the spawn to help our ease of identification.

For ponds lacking hard clay, does putting down some landscape fabric (weed barrier) before placing the coarse material somewhat help reduce the muckiness?

Has anyone tried gently flushing the beds in the early spring with your trolling motor outwash to suspend the finest muck and leave the proper bedding material? Seems like not that much extra effort when you were doing a work day in the boat anyway. (Assuming that is would actually be beneficial.)

In the public lake near here and private ponds near here both utilize the same area. Both spawn on sand bottom and both spawn on pea gravel areas. Muck? I haven't seen them spawning on that substrate unless they can fan it away to get to sand/gravel.

Anything you can do to get the proper substrate will increase spawning.

I live in Clay County. It is appropriately named. Lots of Clay. Had considered fixing area with sand and pea gravel; but may be better off with just leaving the bare clay. What do you think?

Find their existing beds and add a double hand full of dime to half dollar sized gravel to each nest. A few rocks on clay works well. Pics of RES on clay/gravel beds.