Have a 1.5 acre pond that is 2/3 surrounded by cattails. Max depth 12ft. Old sand pit. Avg depth pry 7 ft. No trees currently sunk but looking to set up some piles on the ice to sink when thaws. Generally speaking how much is too much tree structure? I love fishing over tree piles but don’t want to create too much for the gills etc to hide in and over populate.

Firstly I would do my best to assess the current or existing BG-small fish overall density. Is it adequate? This evaluation will provide good insight as to how much most cover habitat is needed. Fish trapping and or targeted angling for small fish will give an idea of the small fish community. The existing cattail beds may currently be enough for a balanced fishery. How is the predator population? What are the RW (relative weights) for the various size classes of predator. Are the size classes (sizes) of predators well represented?

Remember that brush piles are pretty temporary especially with the finer divided twigs. Thus fairly quickly the brush becomes fluffy cover instead of dense refuge cover. If your goal is primarily sport fish attraction the I would build for buy fluffy type of cover. See this link of pages for homemade cover. It has been found that structure works best if it is a foot or two off the bottom so fish can get on all sides of it.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92463#Post92463

Do floating docks that float on two metal shoreline based poles count towards the recommended amount of habitat?? How about shoreline rip rap??????

When fishing lakes that have both floating and pole anchored piers, the ones with poles most always hold more fish than the floating piers that have little cover other than shade. Hope this little bit helps you make a call on whether or not it would be considered as cover.

Bill has provided excellent advice. The thread has lots of ideas and discussion. Its amount and use depends on your goals and situation. Generally some non-shoreline cover is a good idea.

I also think you need to consider what your forage is when determining adequate habitat. My lake it's mainly a gizzard shad forage so my problem becomes how do you create habitat that allows the bass to forage on shad without expending a ton of calories doing so. Gizzard shad are not going to hang around shoreline cover like bluegills unless they are spawning or unless it's at night. So if anyone has any ideas about how to create open water habitat for shad based lakes that would be helpful, I've thought about using floating habitat anchored to the bottom, but they you worry about anchor ropes getting fowled up.

Shad surround Christmas tree deep water cover like that below.


http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post499404