Keep your eye out for crews laying spooled up poly pipe for fiber optic projects. Every time they make a connection they end up with cut off pieces. We talked to a crew and they offered up about 200 cut offs, perfect lengths of 3 to 6 ft. We took 5 gallon buckets (we got these free also from some painters) and set 5 to 7 of the pvc pieces in the buckets, then screwed them to the sides of the buckets. Note - orient the bucket handle 'upright' between the pvc. We used old rock to fill up the bucket about half way then mixed concrete to fill the voids around the rocks. The only cost in the project was time and the concrete. I think one bag of concrete was good for 3 to 4 buckets.

To keep the bucket upright, we used a length of rope through the bucket handle, and lowered the bucket to the bottom then pulled the rope back around the handle and repeated. I think we ended up with 25 or so of these bucket trees. We did this in Feb of 2023. By summer of 2023 the bass and crappie were congregated at these trees. Lots of fun!

Oh, prior to setting the pvc we ran some sandpaper down them to rough them up. I tried to use a drill but was easier to do by hand. This went super quick and really helped the algae to take hold as mentioned above.