Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat habitat for trout stream

I sent an e-mail to Mike Mitchell last night and this morning there was a reply. From his response I realized stream habitat projects are quite a bit more intricate than sinking a habitat I built in the garage in the pond. I realized that as the "Bosses" of our own ponds we tend to do what we want, tinker, experiment, and of course occasionally screw up. Well the same logic applied to a stream has implications both upstream and downstream of the waters I'm particularly interested in. There is a greated degree of responsibility. He advised me to walk upstream and downstream of my section of the stream for about 2 miles to get a better understanding of the stream and see the components of the stream that the trout see. This will help give me a perspective of what the trout need. As he put it, for all we know my reach may be a critical spawning or juvenile rearing area, or possibly important microinvertibrate habitat. If I add a pool to try and encourage the trout to stay it may be damaging to the overall fishery. Messing with a stream comes with a big responsibility. Before I do anything I have to read and learn and then possibly seek professional help. (It's not so simple a cave man can do it!)