Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Floating brush pile?

I have been trying to figure out how to do some new habitat like mossback root wads, and started worrying about swimmers and jumping in , etc. Then I thought about puting 3 or 4 root wads suspended in the middle of the pond, root wads would be about 2' underwater with float on top in 12-15 foot deep anchored with a cinder block. Floating fish structure. Good or bad idea?

I do it with PVC trees, and definitely think it has merit. I placed mine on a structure break to increase the odds of migratory fish finding it. They're anchored in 14' of water, but the cover is there for water that's 8' deep? Does that make sense?

I also have thought of doing something similar to that.

I have a bunch of old water "plassons" (chicken or turkey waterers) that are made of plastic and are slightly positively buoyant. I thought about tying a bunch of these into something like a bouquet of helium balloons would be, then anchor them like you said with a concrete block.

I do not see why it would not work well. If a person hooked it it would have some give.

Be careful for what you wish and what you get. On the other side, maybe my old neighbors would gladly give this to you for the taking:

Floating bog overtakes neighborhood!

Ken, that's weird.

That is a tad bigger than I was thinking.

I was thinking if a placed it right, I would be able to cast to all sides, and if some did jump out of kayak on it, it would have some give. My main concern is how fish would respond to moving structure. It would be able to move some due to winds and waves.

So tree starts at 8' deep and goes up to surface?

No, it just occupies that same 8" water I'm targeting. I have the top 2-3' under the surface. I have pics somewhere, I'll try to find them.

Bottom line though is that floating cover from the bottom works well in water that's not easily accessed by any other way, and the depth you want it at is as simple as the length of the rope or cord you use to secure it.

Interesting concept and close to the philosophy of floating islands. Both have merit as habitat and structure. Let us know with pictures and or descriptions how they perform.

BrianL, I would prefer the floating cover to be 2' under the waters surface because anything floating on the surface or nearer to the surface would most likely be a fish eating perch. Not to be confused with a bg, or a yellow perch. I am not a fan of anything that will support such thing as Cormorants. I would like to have floating islands tor two reasons, 1 - Floating flower bed would look nice and 2- I need plants to take up excess nutrients in my pond water. BUT!! The reasons for not have such things is because it most likely become a fishing spot for fish eating birds.

Brian, here's 2 pics. The first one from my original post showing the trees I first put out. They're the 2 tallest ones in front of the open shop door. The head space above the top horizontal pieces of 1" PVC is the important part. It took right at 13" of head space to suspend a 5' section of 4-in PVC with all the amenities from the bottom. That's important to me, because that makes it repeatable. For what you're wanting, you'd only need the head space part.

The second pic is of something I hobbled together this morning to show a close up the rigging. I only used rebar in this pic because that's what I had close at hand.

I hope this helps your plans, and let us know how this all turns out. If you do start out with with something like this, make it better so we can learn from you.

Newbie here on the blog so be gentle. I've played with floating structure for about ten years now on public waters. I have great pictures of brown herons perched for the kill. But I also have a lot of pictures showing the fish hiding in the shade of the island and waiting for their next meal, be it skuds, frogs or the bluegill that was hoping for a dragonfly. In some cases I anchored it short so that it was just beneath the surface. I've built several using different materials. The best I have found so far was to use a closed cell foam floor pad or Beemats (holes already drilled) for flotation and then sandwich it between PolyFlow Black matrix. I can help with details or send you the materials. If you have aerators and can position it above the aerator, it works even better and is an in-pond bio=filter.
Roswell Conservation facebook post

DesertBass - Thanks for sharing information of your creative island projects. Do you have enough pictures with descriptions that you could create an article about your favorite island for Pond Boss magazine? Article could be two pages, one with words & directions and one page of pictures. I see it as a VERY popular useful article. Contact the magazine editor at: info@pondboss.com