There’s a new housing development in the works at Arkansas’ Beaver Lake, but waterfront property owners need not speculate about new neighbors. The new homes are of the underwater variety – in the form of PVC fish shelters – and the intended residents are bass as well as other species of game fish.
A recent $5,000 donation from FLW Outdoors, made through the FishAmerica Foundation, will be used by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to create fish shelters that will be submerged in the lower end of Beaver Lake, the host site of the FLW Tour’s March 30-April 3 Wal-Mart Open. The shelters will benefit fish by providing habitat and cover – attracting species like largemouth bass, spotted bass, bluegills and crappies – which will in turn benefit sport fishermen.
Ron Moore, district fisheries biologist for the commission, said, “The same factors that make brush … good attractors make the PVC structures good attractors.”
The PVC shelters emulate underwater brush piles, Moore said. The structures are created by fastening the PVC pipes against one another crossways in several layers, with a “roof” of smaller pipes topping the shelter to provide shade. Moore said the end result is akin to “Lincoln Logs cabins with little, flat roofs on them.”
The 2004 donation from FLW Outdoors will allow the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to construct and distribute about 20 shelters. Including past donations from FLW Outdoors, which has visited Beaver Lake seven times through the FLW Tour, the commission has been able to introduce about 70 PVC shelters into the lake as well as older shelters made from wooden pallets. Thousands of discarded Christmas trees have been submerged in Beaver Lake over the years, too, but Moore said there’s always a need for more fish attractors in the large fishery located in northwestern Arkansas.
“Unlike the PVC, (the trees and pallets) don’t last a long time,” he said.
An advantage of shelters composed of PVC plastic is they are essentially permanent. The PVC shelters also accumulate build-up of microorganisms, which is a food source for forage fish that attract game fish.
“They’re fairly expensive to build,” Moore said of the PVC shelters. “But people do catch quite a few fish around them.”
Adding the artificial shelters helps boost the fish population in Beaver Lake, and it increases the success of tournament and recreational anglers fishing there. Providing a quality fishing experience in turn helps the local economy, which benefits greatly from fishing tournaments and the fishing industry in general, Moore said.
“Fish attractors can have a very significant impact on fish population and as far as putting fish on the ends of people’s lines,” Moore said.
In 2000, FLW Outdoors announced its partnership with the FishAmerica Foundation, the conservation arm of the American Sportfishing Association, and has since directly donated more than $200,000 – and helped to generate more than $1 million – for local conservation projects. FLW Outdoors will donate $5,000 for each of the seven FLW Tour events in 2004 as well as for some of the other tournaments taking place among its six tournament circuits.
