Creating Habitat (fish cities) on Lake Vilbig

2017  

 

 

The Vilbig Bass Club hired Bob Lusk to manage the project.  The key players were Rick Huffman (Lake Vilbig project manager),  Bob Lusk & Zachary Peterson (Bob Lusk Outdoors),  David Ewald (Fishiding Reclaimed Artificial Fish Habitat), Mossback Structure, The ILA and the Vilbig Bass Club.

The Vilbig Bass club highly recomends Bob Lusk Outdoors if you are thinking about improving your fish habitat.

 

 

Pictures of the the structures

 

 

http://www.bobluskoutdoors.com/

 

 

https://www.mossbackfishhabitat.com

 
 https://www.fishiding.com

 

 

  How we did it from START to FINISH

Getting Started - Click on the link below to view how we got rolling on the project. This was the start in getting the lake mapped for habitat. Zachary Peterson created a habitat and structure map (see it on our maps page)
http://www.lakevilbig.org/survey10.pdf


After we had the lake mapped, Bob provided us several suggestions based on our unique lake environment. Click on the link below for the details http://www.lakevilbig.org/survey11.pdf

Zachary Peterson from Bob Lusk Outdoor worked with us to pinpoint 3 sites to enhance the structure. The below link goes into detail the reasoning and a final plan.
http://www.lakevilbig.org/survey12.pdf

In order to best utilize the available funding for the project, it was decided to create custom habitat ourselves for some of the structures and purchase other structure from Mossback. We reached out to many people around the lake for ideas. We also researched commercially made structures for information and ideas to design our custom structures.  We decided that many of them had excellent qualities. We built several prototypes and finally created the ones we liked the best.

One is a simulated Brush Pile, The other is a simulated Downed Log.

Bob Lusk's Team reviewed our design and made the recommendations for amount and locations for each type as well as Mossback structure.

We made 40 of the Brush Piles and 20 of the Downed Logs. All are to be place in reasonably shallow water. The Mossback structure will be placed in the deeper locations.

During this design period we experimented with some leftover vinyl siding that we had on hand. We contacted David Ewald with Fishiding Reclaimed Artificial Fish Habitat. He was very helpful with sharing ideas and knowledge with us.We purchased some of his product to incorporate into our custom design. We received the materials very quickly and we were pleasantly surprised that David had included about an extra 25% more than we had ordered.

 

 

Timeline

04-18-2016	Discuss options with Bob Lusk
	Original stocking Plan
04-29-2016	Stocking plan to Jon Griffin
07-12-2016	Present Stocking plan to ILA Directors
07-14-2016	Discuss plan and map options with Bob Lusk
07-21-2016	Deliver Contour map to Bob
09-01-2016	Zach- map lake
09-13-2016	Map in Hand
	·         Review map VBC
09-21-2016	Meet with Zach to discuss updates to map
	·         Review map VBC
10-03-2016	Updates to Zach
10-04-2016	Receive Final Map
10-22-2016	Initial Recommendations for habitat from Bob Lusk
10-24-2016	Post Map to VBC website
11-01-2016	Discuss types of structure with Bob Lusk
11-01-2016	Update ILA Directors and request ILA help fund
01-26-2017	Identify 7 locations
02-03-2017	Deliver locations to Bob Lusk
02-16-2017	Present original prototypes to Lusk for review
02-23-2017	Lusk approval for prototypes
02-27-2017	Review custom to incorporate Fishiding materials
02-27-2017	Redesign prototypes
02-28-2017	Zach review and approves new version of Custom prototypes
03-01-2017	Receive text version of habitat recommendations
03-10-2017	Receive map version of habitat recommendations
03-10-2017	Order Mossback
03-20-2017	Establish April 29th as “Planting” date
	Create custom habitat
04-21-2017	Pick up Mossback
4-26 to 4-28-2017	Stage all custom parts and build Mossback
04-28-2017	Reschedule “Plant” date for 4-30-2017
04-29-2017	Plant all habitat in Site 1, 2 and 3
SOON	Zach to submit recommendations for other areas

 Where the Fish Cities are located - X marks the spot

 

 

 

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