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Oh Christmas Reef

Andy Whitcomb

12/20/2011

Fish structure doesn’t just concentrate fish for angler success; the extra underwater surface area cultivates algae and plankton, starting the food chain and increasing the productivity of the entire system.

And who can think about natural fish structures without thinking about Christmas? No other holiday season culminates with the traditional sinking of large quantities of decorative centerpieces.

The Five Steps of the Christmas tree Season:

1. Buy tree.

2. Decorate.

3. Enjoy.

4. Take down sometime before Easter.

5. Donate to a Christmas tree recycling program for use as fish structure in a lake.

There is even the novel idea of using living Christmas trees in your family room, containerized, so that you can plant it in your yard later. This way, you can enjoy pruning and watching your future fish structure grow for years and years.

This brings us to choosing your Christmas Reef. For the outdoorsman who has everything, the tree can be a gift – a gift of fish structure that will help some local fisheries manager. Go ahead and wire it to a cinder block as the tree stand. Throw a couple of those novelty fish pillows under the tree, if you want to make it really classy.

And you might as well go ahead and embed a couple of lures in the branches for ornaments. Just a matter of time before they rest with the tree anyway.

Fishing, Kids + Family

Andy Whitcomb

Andy is an outdoor writer (http://www.justkeepreeling.com/) and stressed-out Dad has contributed over 380 blogs to takemefishing.org since 2011. Born in Florida, but raised on banks of Oklahoma farm ponds, he now chases pike, smallmouth bass, and steelhead in Pennsylvania. After earning a B.S. in Zoology from OSU, he worked in fish hatcheries and as a fisheries research technician at OSU, Iowa State, and Michigan State.

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