Growing bait right under your dock, can you do it for free?

If you had all kinds of food in the form of bugs, minnows, shade and panfish hanging out and living under your dock, wouldn't you find a big bass nearby as well? Food and lots of it, brings in bugs, animals, fish and birds, all the same, including hungry humans. Now add some shade, drinks, secret resting spots, things to loaf on, and we got an actual area to call home. Hang these feeders under your dock and watch them gather around it.

Your dock has the shade, some vertical supports, a boat lift and maybe even more. Good place to hang a fish feeder or one of those green lights right? Yes. Fish like food. More food just flat out equals more fish.

Those lights bring in bugs and that's what they are supposed to do. The bugs bring in bigger fish to eat them and up the food chain, until top predator fish, fowl and mammals included. Fish feeders toss food out and bring fish in to eat. One problem is the fish eat and leave once the timer shuts off. If the food was there all the time, wouldn't they stay around longer? A minnow trap or cast net will round up some forage for a day fishing in the boat if they stayed.

The feed quality today is fantastic. It will grow fish huge and fast, without a doubt, but at what price? No different than feeding our livestock, chickens and pigs to get to market the fastest, our scientists have figured out how to make money with food. It costs a good deal of coin to run those feeders. Wouldn't it be cool if you had one that never ran out, free all the time? A good dock kit must give fish a reason to stay around the dock, right?

There is a new product out called the Fish Fry Feeder that runs forever for free, growing natural food for the bugs and fish fry. It consists of a wall of thin PVC strips that hang into the water, suspended by a heavy mono leader. There is nothing to get snagged on, thin, flexible strips of plastic that fill up with life and fish cover.

Creating this wall of crevices and fuzz, the bugs and fry call it home. Periphyton then algae grow throughout the dozens of square feet of surface area. We have to remember the food chain is king. Without the bugs, fuzz and places to hide, small animals including fish have no reason to stay. Here's even more bug houses.