Outdoor News Daily

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission placed four fish-attractor reefs in Lake Higgins earlier this month. The attractors are marked by orange-and-white buoys.

While there’s nothing new about the design of the fish attractors, the way they’re situated in the lake is a novel idea that Corey Oakley, a fisheries biologist with the Commission, hopes will improve the fishing in the 226-acre impoundment, located in northern Guilford County.

Commission staff, along with personnel from Greensboro Watershed Parks, Lake Higgins anglers and other volunteers, encircled PVC-pipe-and-plastic-barrel fish structures with porcupine fish attractors to create an artificial reef that measures about 5 feet in height and 15 feet in diameter.

Commission biologists hope that this design will attract a greater diversity of fish. Ongoing studies conducted in lakes Cammack and Townsend indicate that, regardless of how they’re made or of what material they are constructed, fish attractors attract fish, although some do a better job than others.

“We’re in the middle of a 3-year survey on lakes Cammack and Townsend to determine the effectiveness of the various types of fish attractors that we placed in those lakes last year,” Oakley said. “Data collected so far suggest that the fish attractors are doing their job – they’re attracting fish, but one size doesn’t fit all.

“Larger fish, such as largemouth bass, channel cats and pickerel, congregate around the PVC- pipe-and-barrel fish structures, while smaller fish, such as sunfish and crappie, seem to prefer the complexity of the porcupine attractors. As their name implies, these structures look like giant porcupine quills connected to a sphere that forms a circular configuration.”

While barrel attractors may not hold the numbers of fish that porcupine attractors do, they hold the bigger fish, so the combined structure should attract a greater diversity of fish as well as greater numbers of the fish.

Commission personnel will place four additional fish-attractor reefs in Lake Brandt later this month.

Enhancing the fishing in all three of Greensboro’s lakes—Townsend, Brandt, and Higgins—was the impetus for installing fish attractors, as well as the supplemental stocking of largemouth bass in Lake Higgins in 2008.

Surveys in Lake Higgins earlier this year showed that the stocked largemouth bass were doing well and, with an existing fishery of channel catfish, sunfish and even chain pickerel, habitat enhancement through artificial fish attractors was the next logical step to improve fishing.

While there are no official plans to survey the effectiveness of the artificial reefs, Oakley said the fish attractors placed in lakes Townsend and Cammack in April 2008 were already attracting fish three months later. He expects similar results with the reefs in lakes Higgins and Brandt.

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