How to Fish Brush Piles and Fish Attractors

Fish attractors are the least-used public resource in bass fishing. State agencies and the Corps of Engineers sink brush, hardwood and manufactured habitat on hundreds of reservoirs, record the coordinates, and publish them. Most anglers have never looked.

What they are

An attractor is deliberately placed structure on a bottom that did not have any — bundled hardwood brush, cedar trees on concrete anchors, stake beds, or moulded plastic units designed not to rot. The goal is habitat: cover for fry, which brings baitfish, which brings bass.

They work because most reservoir bottoms are poor. Fifty years after impoundment the original timber has rotted out and what is left is silt. A brush pile in twelve feet of featureless flat is the only thing for a hundred yards, and every bass in that area knows it.

Finding them

The coordinates are public records, but they are scattered across agency sites in formats nobody enjoys — KMZ files, ArcGIS layers, PDF tables. BassHawk collects them per lake, plots them on the map with the depth each sits in, and names the agency that placed it. Some lakes carry hundreds.

Depth is the part that makes them usable. A list of coordinates is a scavenger hunt; a list of coordinates sorted by depth band lets you fish only the piles that match the season you are in.

Fishing one without losing baits

Position the boat off the pile and cast past it, then work the bait to the edge rather than through the middle. The fish that are going to eat are on the outside and on the up-current or windward face; the ones buried in the middle are not feeding.

Start with something that deflects — a crankbait that ticks the top of the brush and kicks off it draws reaction strikes. When that stops producing, drop a jig or a worm vertically down the face. Braid to a fluorocarbon leader gets more baits back.

Work the depth band that matches the season. Pre-spawn and fall, the shallow piles at 6 to 12 feet. Summer and winter, the deep ones at 18 to 25. Fishing the wrong band all day is the usual reason people conclude attractors do not work.