What are Fish Cities? Why do you need them?

So we're right here by the side of a Texas lake. This is one we designed, built, and now we are placing habitat within it. We're putting out ten fish cities at this site. Each fish city is a conglomeration of four or five different types of habitat from Mossback Habitat. That all work together as one unit. So our first step is to get everything unloaded off the truck, put everything into piles of like types of habitat, the different structures, stage them there. So then you can take all the fish cities and put them around the lake where each fish city is going to go and eventually build them there and put them right into Lake where they go.

The definition of habitat is all the things the fish needs chemical, biological, you name it, to sustain a population. Habitat has to take care of fish across multiple life stages. These are a great way to create permanent habitat for your fishery no matter the species you are targeting. We sat down with Mossback Fish Habitat almost ten years ago now on this very property to design prototypes of a fish city. We paid special attention to exactly what each stage of a fishes life would need. We called a fish city that because when you walk around, it's kind of got everything that a spawning bass to mature bass could need.

Spawning Beds

A lot of lakes we work and have mucky bottoms. They don't have very good spawning substrates. So we could take care of that by utilizing the spawning bed with a substrate that a bass needs. And here we just use natural gravel from this site. Then we built a small structure around here to kind of replicate a log with some branches sticking out. Every year we have these out, there is almost always a Largemouth Bass using this as the perfect spawning bed.

Safe Haven Laydown Log

The next piece we have is the Safe Haven Laydown Log. They're high density, lots of interstitial spaces, lots of protective habitat above and below. They are where small fry larvae transitioning to juveniles can go out and start feeding in deeper water. They can go back and forth here depending on their needs and food availability and eventually they're going to make their way on to the big lake, into the open water.

Safe Haven Kit

The Safe Haven Kit is provides a combination of structure clustered together that will provide shade and a resting place for sport fish to relate to throughout the year regardless of water conditions or temperature. It also provides condensed limb cover to bring in baitfish for your sport fish to feed from all in one kit. And we've provided this haven for them in the middle of this habitat complex. The Safe Haven Kit which may also be called the Predator Prey Kit. This has really high availability of nooks and crannies. It's hard for a predator to come in here and feed on fish. Great, great safety. And a great haven for them. And again, they can kind of spread out and feed and move back and forth from shallow to deep water as needed.

Trophy Tree

The last piece in this fish city is the Trophy Tree. The are spread out around the outside of the fish city. The last structure before open water. The goal is to see juveniles going out and feeding on more of the outside stations, getting more and more fish prey, but eventually they become mature fish.

When we designed these with Mossback and we talked about all the things that started off a large mouth bas, try to take care of what they need across their lifespan and different sizes and different seasons. And as we started building these, we also realized that Yellow Perch love these things. And and Black Crappies really are associated with this type of structure. We get walleyes in here, small mouth bass. There's lots of different fish species that use this, all designed from kind of from a large amount basis point of view.

To learn more about habitat, science, where to start, how much to put out, what to use. Give us a call or get in touch with us. We're happy to talk habitat.

Brian Graeb, PhD

Blue Wing Outdoors