Sand bags or cinder blocks? Is one better than the other for making brush piles?

Sandbags are easier on your boat but more trouble than cinder blocks.

Never sunk a brush pile, plenty of structure planted by others 😂

I have done both and even picked up rocks at the lake. Use whatever is available and the most cost effective. Favorite saying from a guy I work with, weight is weight...

cinder blocks if I can get them, if not I get some red onion sacks and put a bunch of rocks in them and tie the big sack of rocks to the tree.

I guess I’ll put some carpet down to protect the pontoon floor and drop some brush with cinder blocks. Thanks all.

In our slip I have 5 gallon buckets with a little cement and big bamboo plants in them that I tie a rope to so I can keep them when they let the slips in and out with the water level. On sides of the boat I tie my bamboo to cinder blocks and just drop them in.
I make them were the tops are 10 ft, under the water.

I made a several of my own brush piles like the one below. They look great out of the water, but tiny in the water and hard to find. I placed them on a spot that had several existing brush piles that were productive but yet I've only caught a handful of fish off of these combined.

I've heard natural work better than artificial but I've not tried to drop any natural ones. If I were going to build these again I would place no fewer than 4 of them next to each other and not drop them as singles.

I decided it just wasn't worth it and it is mush easier to find piles placed by the guides. If you know the depths and type of topography that are productive during the summer months, you can just scan those areas with downscan/sidescan. I usually use sidescan to find at least one pile in an area and then I'll use livescope to scan the surrounding area to find all the cover. On my home lake, I've marked piles on 4 productive sections of the lake that I routinely fish. Each section is about 1000 acres. Each trip I fish a different section and that's enough variety to allow me to catch regular limits throughout late spring through December.

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Ron---

when we make pvc piles , we always place 5 to a spot. I firmly believe fish prefer real brush. We do have some pvc spots that will
hold fish , but they are placed no where near brush or timber. On one spot we built a nice pvc pile , then some one dropped a big
brush pile about 30 ft from the pvc. This pretty much killed the pvc spot. PVC is great in that it never rots, you don't get hung up,
and will hold fish is placed in the right location

your mileage may vary

MO

a second thought on pvc , it seems to work better if it extends high in the water column, We have several that only come up 3-4 ft from the
bottom in 18 ft , these are not as productive as the ones that extend 8- 10 ft up.

MO

We caught some hammers on PVC this week! It's funny how sometimes they like PVC an sometimes brush! If I had to pick only one it would be brush though.

I was planning on using real brush. Most of the guide videos state that leaves really help. I have about 7 marked on the lake that I didn’t put out. Just wanna try a couple. With livescope I can timber fish, but I like taking kids and newbies to brush.

Bamboo is good. If legal to plant on your lake. Make condos like PVC, 5 gallon buckets, and concrete.

My home lake has a bunch of both pvc and brush and the brush hold them better. Everything I put in will be brush

with pvc attractors, the only thing that usually holds fish is the bucket.,., you just as well sink 5 or 6 buckets in a pile or close to each other.. every time Ive found a PVC attractor, it was the same thing, one or 2 fish sitting next to the bucket.
I think it looks unnatural to the crappie, and the pvc pipes move alot when the waves go past them,. they dont like this