I have been trying to come up with a way to build fairly permanent, dense fish cover that might work per Eric Engbretson's observations (why fish cribs work and why they fail). I found a 2001 pdf document titled GFRAqua, that shows an artificial "habitat" constructed of geotextile material that is cut into small strips and weighted down with sand. Here's a link that might work: http://www.geosynthetica.net/Uploads/GFRAqua.pdf
Has anybody out there tried something like this? Is it a bad idea?
Thanks,
Dale

Something I have considered for the very most dense portion of the cover (maybe to replace some of the finer limbs of the cedar trees when they wear out) is baler twine.

I was thinking find a farmer that feeds round bales that either uses netting or the old plastic twine. There is usually wads of this stuff laying around feeding areas they would probably love for someone to haul off. Take some orange plastic fencing material (the kind construction sites use to fence off areas for safety reasons) or any other kind, zip tie a length into kind of a pillow shape, stuff with the used baler twine and/or baler netting, stuff a couple of rocks in there for ballast, then zip tie the final end.

Lay on the bottom or use giant zip ties to tie off to old underwater structures. I'm a scuba diver so this is not a problem for me. Might be for others.

A very good inexpensive source for giant zip ties is a heating/air commercial supply house. You can buy them in bags of 100 that are thick and three feet long for about as cheap as you can buy regular small zip ties in a Wal-Mart. These big ones are used to zip tie up heating and air ducting in houses.

I have not tried this, but plan on it this summer. The orange plastic fencing material should keep the twine and/or netting contained so it does not make a fishing nightmare. It should be dense cover and could be as dense as one wants to pack it or left more loose and even zip tied in bundles around inside the fencing if a person wanted some open space in the middle of the habitat "pillow".

A little manure rubbed into it from the feed lot ought to be a bonus. Should get a good bloom of good algae and bugs started on it right away.

Just my hair brained idea to use some throw away stuff.

I wonder if it will all sink to the bottom (the GeoTex) once it gets more growth on it.

snrub, I like your thoughts (I'm a complete newbie though). Something with a variety of size material seems best, with densely packed fine stuff being the hardest to come up with for me. Bailer twine is a nice neutral color so should work well for the dense stuff. I see they make snow fence in black as well. I think I'll start collecting twine. I don't scuba but I have friends that do (they work for beer). I'll check with our local HVAC supplies for those ties also. Thanks for the feedback - I'll try and get some before and after photos and see what happens.

I suppose it might sink. I'm now leaning towards a snow fence / bailing twine center, attached to a pallet / block base to provide a "basement", with the geotextile "kelp" around the outside of the snow fence. I could tie-off the geotextile to the top of the snow fence to keep it from sinking. Maybe a float at the top is required to keep the thing upright? Looks like we have another week of ice here, so I'm hoping to get a few of these put together quickly if possible.

Thanks for the comment

Something that could add some coarser material to the matting would be like plastic pop or water bottles, cap taken off and mashed, then lots of holes drilled in them so gas will not accumulate.

This is another hair brain idea I have had. Save all the plastic bottles and make a pillow out of them with the fencing stuff. Maybe a combo of the baler twine/netting and plastic bottles might work. The bottles crushed and packed together would provide lots of small passage ways between them, kind of like a coarse rock pile would.

Where I got the baler twine idea was a commercial fish attractor made out of shredded recycled plastic in a mesh bag. Will try to find it and provide a picture or link. Always figured anything that dense would be too dense for the fish. But I think the idea is to provide surface area for the little critters to reproduce that the very small fish feed on. Maybe some of the experts can comment on material density for various forms of life that provide food for the life cycle of fish.

In an established pond with weeds, probably don't need anything like we are talking about. But I would think providing this habitat earlier before weeds are established in a new pond would be beneficial.

I'm a newby also. Only had a pond that I paid any attention to for a couple years now. Have a bunch of old delapidated farm ponds scattered around farm land that have been forgotten. Paid no attention to ponds since I did not have live stock. But when we built the new one behind our house for pleasure, been paying more attention and learning about ponds. Been renovating some of the old ones also. So I am learning along with you, with maybe a couple years head start is all.

The big zip ties I am talking about are BIG zip ties. They might be more than you are looking for to zip up the fencing. I was thinking more of using them for tying bigger stuff like the pillow itself to an existing underwater structure. We use them around the farm to tie up hydraulic hoses on farm equipment. They are probably a quarter inch wide and 3 feet long. Not where I can look at one right now, but they definitely will hold a lot of strain. They would work great for like tying a Christmas tree to a concrete block or something like that.

Bought in bags of 100, they are pretty reasonably priced.

This is what I saw that made me think of the baling twine and/or netting wadded up in a pillow of plastic fencing material. With maybe some mashed up pop bottles with holes drilled in them for good measure.

Not sure if this is an advertising sponsor and I think there are limitations to providing links to non sponsors, but if the link gets removed just do a Google search for "artificial fish habitat fish feeder bag". This is where I got the idea. I would have figured this would TOO dense, but not according to this seller anyway.

fish feeder bag

And yes, do take photos of whatever project you end up doing and post them. Also don't forget to tell us how it works out after a period of time. People read the old threads a lot (I'm one of them) to get ideas and it is always good when someone thought enough to go find their old post and present results after a year or two.

Bait ball artificial habitat feeders.

What say the experts? Is this type of habitat/food production center of any value in a new or fairly new pond?

Or just a good way for some manufacturer to sell something to the unsuspecting that would have otherwise went in the dumpster and should have went in the dumpster?????

bait ball feeders

Anybody own these and have practical experience or have built something similar?

snrub, That stuffed bag looks ideal to me. I'm going to start saving likely looking materials. I can't think of a method to shred plastic bottles en mass, but I could flatten and perforate them enough to work. I'm thinking of using black plastic deer netting as the bag since I have a roll of it.

Do folks think that bag would work very well deployed from a boat? How long does it take for new structure to attract fish? I was thinking it would be a weeks-long process, but maybe it's a lot faster.

Get one of these. These things are invaluable when drilling holes in fish habitat. They drill great in PVC tubing, black plastic tubing, plastic jugs, plastic pop bottles, plastic five gallon buckets, anything that is not over about a quarter inch thick for steel and even thicker in softer stuff like plastic. The Harbor Freight brand are probably not nearly as good as a name brand one, but for plastic they are completely adequate. I have drilled hundreds and hundreds of holes with them.

The smaller sizes are a lot cheaper and for small holes are the ones to use because the first step is the one to get dull first. But the bigger size is great for drilling 1 1/4 holes big enough for small BG and FHM hiding spaces. A person wants enough water flow through anything you place so the water does not become oxygen deficient or gather bad gasses in air pockets.

They do not work great in rubber car or truck tire side walls, but I did not find anything that really did work good for rubber.

Step drill for drilling fish habitat holes

Did you try using a cutting lube for the rubber? WD-40, dish soap, etc? I've learned that when drilling holes, (with any type of drill bit) the holes drill easier, and the bits last longer if lube is used.

FWIW, call around to find a sharpening service. They should be able to sharpen those step drills too, if they can sharpen regular drill bits.

We offer the Baitball feeders Snub. They absolutely work as claimed, hang one under your dock and see what hangs around. Certainly not anything new, just massive surface area producing food. as far as gases creating buoyancy, we have found the fish graze off the growth before it can accumulate enough to rise. A squirt of insulation foam can change that in a hurry if one wants to suspend or float the same.

Keep your creative thinking going, your ideas are great and should work well.........keep the hooks away from that baling twine!!

Ok, thanks for that info.

I can see where most people, for the time and trouble involved, would much rather buy something pre-made like you sell. If a person's time is worth anything, the prices you have on the ready made ones look reasonable. Not to mention a good way to use recycled material.

For some of us, the fun is in the experimenting, creativity and satisfaction of making something from almost nothing. Trying to figure out how, what and why it works.

Yes, the thought of getting a hook in a bunch of twine is not a pleasant one. A person sure would want to keep it contained within whatever mesh he chose.

Thanks for the encouragement.

Could meshwork act as a gill net?

Never even crossed my mind of trying cutting lube on rubber.

Try it, but make sure that you have a good hold on the drill. I've had the bit grab and just corkscrew through material instead of cutting a hole. Not the step drills, but regular drills. It never happens with the small bits, typically around 1/2" and larger. Immediately 2 things go through my mind. 1) I gotta let go of the trigger. 2) If I let go of the trigger, I'll relax my grip on the drill and get hurt. So, what usually happens is I ride it all the way to the chuck, or until it runs out of flutes.

Dudley, I never gave a thought about the deer netting acting as a gill net. I bet it would. Thank you for the heads-up, I'm going to leave it out of the mix.

I had some success with wood spade bits. They dull pretty quick, and when they go through they leave a ragged hole, but at least they do not corkscrew down like you say.

Now that I think about it, something I DID NOT try but might work is either a circular saw with abrasive blade or angle grinder with metal blade and just cut slits in the tires. All I was trying to do was make them so they would not accumulate gas. Just any way to quickly get a number of holes in them was the object. I might have been trying to do it too neatly. Big 9" angle grinder with thin cutting blade might make short work of it. I kinow I got tired of drilling holes in tires.

Some say EPA even says we are not supposed to use them for under water. I don't know for sure about that though. Guess I am just storing them there out of the sunlight till I need them again.

Angle grinders and cut off wheels don't work so well. They melt/burn the rubber. Try using a regular twist drill about 3/8" dia or slightly larger and make sure that it has flats on the shank. If you try to drill thru the tread, the steel belts will be a PITA. The flats allow the chuck to grab the bit firmly without you having to reef on the chuck key. I've seen chucks boogered up by too much pressure on the chuck key.

A hole saw won't allow the rubber "chips" to clear out of the hole like sawdust does.

I've tried a LOT of methods and for me, the twist drills seem to work the best as long as they are sharp. Lube, and have a drill that has a lot of grunt. The sides ofthe hole will want to grab on the drill, lube helps keep them slippery.

If you're drilling holes in tires to sink them, just get about a two foot length of garden hose and put one end into the air pocket in order to vent the air out. Although I've never seen it happen, if, over the years, accumulating gasses cause them to refloat, just repeat the process.