An angler puts together a MossBack Fish Habitat tree before sinking
it to attract gamefish. Photo courtesy of MossBack Fish Habitat
Catfish Cover Works
By Brent Frazee
Mossback Fish Habitat may be fake, but catfish don’t care.
Dan Dannenmueller remembers the moment he became convinced that artificial fish habitat could attract more than just bass and crappie.
During a media conference he hosted, he and others pieced together a MossBack Fish Habitat, a structure made of PVC, and sank it in Jackson Lake in Alabama. After the event, he went back to the place where they dropped the artificial tree and … well, we’ll let Dannenmueller take it from here.
“We put that structure in 14 to 15 feet of water, not far from a ledge,” said Dannenmueller, publisher of the CatfishNOW and CrappieNOW digital magazines. “When I came back, I could see on my electronics that it was just loaded with fish.
“I was fishing vertically with a small jig for crappie, and I could see this big fish moving toward my jig. It hit, and the fight was on.
“It turned out to be a 15-pound flathead.”
A fluke? Hardly.
The MossBack structures, with a main base and multiple PVC limbs, were designed primarily to attract largemouth bass and crappie. But fishermen and biologists are finding that they are equally effective attracting flathead and channel catfish.
Dannenmueller, who competes in professional crappie tournaments with his wife Sue, has found that the crappie and catfish often reside in the same structures—the flatheads in the “basement,” the crappie in the upper floors.
“The catfish like that overhead structure,” Dannenmueller said. “They like to root out a place at the base and ambush the small panfish and minnows that are attracted to the structures.”
The catfish will act the same way in natural habitat. But woody brushpiles and logjams have a limited life. They will wear down over time. The MossBack structures are durable and will last for years. And with their textured surfaces and flexible limbs, they are somewhat snag resistant for fishermen.
Because flatheads are ambush feeders, it should come as no surprise that they relate to the artificial trees. But what Dannenmueller catches them on…well, that’s surprising.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught flatheads on (Bobby Garland) Itty Bit jigs, fishing for crappie,” he said. “Why they would go for something that small is beyond me. They must be hungry.”
The MossBack structures definitely give them a place to feed, especially in bodies of water with little natural cover.
Much of their effectiveness has to do with how they are placed in the water. What’s good for bass isn’t necessarily good for catfish.
“Bass want good vertical structure they can suspend in,” said Steven Bardin, a fisheries biologist who manages 70 to 100 private bodies of water in Texas and is a consultant for fish and game agencies and companies such as MossBack.
“Catfish want horizontal cover, something that provides room for them to get under the branches and have overhead cover.”
Fisheries biologists with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission have seen how catfish will relate to the artificial structure.
They often will use MossBack structures to restore cover in sections of reservoirs where natural cover is deteriorating. In one informal experiment on Norfork Lake on the Missouri-Arkansas border, fisheries biologists placed the structures off rocky points and flats, then later examined the results by scuba diving.
They expected to see concentrations of bass and lots of panfish. But they were surprised to see good numbers of flathead catfish as well.
“When we would dive down, we saw how the flatheads’ mottled look allowed them to blend in,” said Cody Wyatt, a former fisheries biologist who has since transferred to the agency’s wildlife division. “They were almost invisible. But we saw a lot of fish in the 3-pound range and some smaller ones as well.
“The abundance of little catfish we found showed us that these structures were apparently helping the flathead population.”
Fishermen often have to get a permit from the Corps of Engineers or other managing authority to sink brush or artificial structures in public water. In private water, it’s a different story. Anglers can sink natural brush or the artificial structure when and where they desire.
Dannenmueller, for example, has 30 MossBack structures in his two-acre pond in Alabama. He manages mostly for crappie, hybrid bluegills and bass. But as a byproduct, he has a thriving population of channel catfish, some of them in the 10-pound range.
Dannenmueller has seen how the channel catfish, which normally will cruise for their food, will use the MossBacks as their home feeding base.
“I have one MossBack just out from the end of my dock,” he said. “The channel cats will get under the dock, sit in the shade facing that structure and wait for the smaller fish to come out of that MossBack.
“In some of the other ones, they’ll just root around under that structure and wait to ambush something. I’ve caught channels with scrapes on top of their heads from where they’ve been rubbing against those PVC limbs.”
Dannenmueller likes to give those channels a sporting chance when he fishes for them. He often uses light line and Bobby Garland crappie baits such as a small black and pink Slab Slay’R. He also finds success using small triangles of hot dogs on Tru Turn hooks, fished under a small bobber.
“When they hit, they don’t mess around,” Dannenmueller said. “They’re powerful. I’ve had fish that will make a run clear to the other side of the pond.”
(Brent Frazee is an award-winning writer and photographer from Parkville, Missouri. He was the outdoors editor for The Kansas City Star for 36 years before retiring in 2016. He continues to freelance for magazines, websites and newspapers.)
