My pond has a lot of watershield growing in shallows - makes it difficult to fish as most of bass are under the cover.

Toying with the idea of creating weed free areas by stapling weed barrier cloth to bottom of pallets and making "paths" through the watershield field by sinking them on bottom in line with each other.

Had anyone tried something this?

I have not done this for the record, but I don't think you get a cheaper way to make some fishing paths. They would be rather temporary and weed barrier/pallets have got to increase snags. Each pallet would need at least a couple cinder blocks worth of weight.

I would consider using something more permanent like concrete pavers or even make some simple concrete forms and start making your own, but the price for each square foot gets to be about $1.50 when using sac-crete.

If you could come up with some old barn tin/ metal siding on the cheap and scrounge some rocks to hold them in place, that would make decent lanes through the weeds and last a long time

Just some off-the -wall thoughts.

Would you be opposed to getting broken chunks of concrete from like a sidewalk tear out? Construction companies are usually wanting to get rid of excess.

If I could get a bunch of cheap pavers that would also be a possibility. I find the pallets are pretty easy to obtain for free. They would also provide some shelter for small fish between the boards.

They would be a bit snaggy - would lay them so boards were in line with path rather than perpendicular to mitigate this a bit.

The watershield is pervasive in water 6' and shallower - luckily most of pond is over 9' deep but the bass seem to stay in the shallows and hunt under the weeds.

Or you can use sand bags if you have sandy soil

Been experimenting with this - put a 6x8 tarp on a extra long 8' pallet. Was a PITA to try to position it and the effort was largly useless. Decided it would be easier to use tarps sunk with cinder blocks. Using cheapest 12x16 tarps at Tractor Supply I cleared out the area around my dock and created a weed free lane through the sunny end of ponds watershield field. Need to add a couple more tarps to the later and then will observe how well they work before doing anymore "tarping". Wading around in the water it felt like the thermocline was around 6' this week - pretty much means that most of the water suitable for fish was either in open water or a jungle of weeds.

Maybe some strategically placed weed killer granules...

I'm resistant to using chemicals as the pond is spring fed and doesn't turn over very fast. I also don't want to clear out all the Watershield as it is good cover for the bluegill fry.