Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Good Idea......Maybe?

I found this stuff laying around thought it might could be used to make some good bluegill cover. The grating is 3"x3" holes. I thought about welding four sheets into a box and the attaching some small irrigation piping from the top and sides. Just a thought but I'm open to ideas.

That's nice spare materials to use as cover for the BG. If you can introduce vegetation around the box, it would encourage the BG to occupy faster. Not to worry too much about the rusting metal. However, if you're planning to fish near this structure, you're going to have a fun time getting snags.

Man! I sure wish I could find some of that "just laying around"! I really need some goat panels like that. That stuff is expensive.

Leo- I was actually thinking of making the top removable and filling it full of brush. then i can just pull it up and refill the brush as needed. or make artificial brush to put in it. what kind of vegetation would you be referring to?

Elsie-You would be amazed at the random stuff my grandpa collected over the years.

Any vegetation that you already have in and around your pond. Artificial PVC branches would offer a great escape for the BG as well.

As for the open top, that's a good idea. But if you want to maximize the surface area, why not use them altogether in a flat surface convention. Below the panel, use 1.5 to 2ft supporting structures at each corner of each panel. Add plants on top of or around the panels for additional covers/protective access points. The BG would have both the viewing advantage for the upper areas, as well as the surround area, and still have plenty of bottom surfaces to create protective beds.

I had that idea also. Attaching legs on the corners and suspending tubing or something along that line from the grid.

Along those same lines, I had around 700 feet of old fence in a big roll after it was taken down that I put on the ice and it dropped through after the melt.

My Dad and I had a pond dug and I took old pallets and nailed them together and hen took hardwood saplings and slipped them in between the slats in the pallets. Bass and bluegills loved them and it's pretty much the same thing you're thinking about doing with your grating. Perhaps some PVC or something like that would work better than small trees or brush. Then they would last forever.
Just a thought. Good luck,
Dan

John-I was looking at a big roll that I have. Have you seen anything hanging around out?

Miotch I can't see the roll of fence but I like to think it is busy with fish. My one acre pond probably has about as much structure as a pond can have. Lots of rocks and bricks built into a reef, 9 tires strapped together in to a pyramid. a 4'x4' platform with lots of 4'upward stakes sticking upward, a dump truck load of rabble rocks, plastic clothes basket tied rim to rim and weighted down, the wire fence roll, a dump truck load of crush rock for bluegill spawning beds, two dump truck load of sand, and all of the vegetation, spatterdock, curly leaf pond weed, spiral ell grass, cattails etc. and the latest is bending mulberry trees over the pond to drop the fruit into the pond.

Mesh Habitat.png

Try some of this type of stuff in there.

my first thought was weaving long plastic leaves through, like a fake grape vine. let us know.....