Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Is forest slash useable for underwater structure?

I need to clean several acres of forest slash, ranging from branches and wood chips to logs that are 2' in diameter and thirty feet long. Plus every size in between.

My pond has almost no underwater structure. I'm wondering if I can use some of this slash to create structure?

My BG beds are very open and exposed with no protection. The problem is that the location varies by year, either shallower or deeper, depending on how full or empty the pond is.

Just wondering if the two match up in any way?

Not so sure I would put just any kind of tree in my pond ,the tannins will stain the water like tea and could be toxic to your fish. I will put cedar trees in after they dry out a bit. How large is your pond?

Stay away from oaks. I use cedars when I get off my lazy butt to cut and haul them.

The pond is 1.1 acres, about 2.1 million gallons. Almost all of the forest slash is from dead pine trees, killed by bark beetles.

I put in cedars and large tangles of honeysuckle, grapevine, and greenbrier. The cedars last a little longer, but the brier and vine tangles are denser and more effective shelter for a season at least. I put the main pile only about 15 to 20 feet from BG bedding area and fairly close to the feeding ring. I have lots of surviving YOY BG from last summer.

I would make sure it's all weighted down or staked down. In my experience just throwing logs into your pond will eventually make a mess of things along the shore line.

Good advice here. DD1 is for sure right. Stay away from any Oaks. I have some pines in my pond and even a few Hickory (smaller ones) they have all done fine and the fish love em. I put about 6 or 7 smaller branches together and tie a rope around it and put a cinder block on it to help them stay put. If it's a larger trunk just do the one trunk with a block.

RC

Black walnut, especially their nut hulls are extremly toxic to fish. They were used for centuries by Native Americans for that exact purpose. Some other nut trees have lesser, but still toxic effects.

However, in a pond with about 2 million gallons of water, a few sparsely placed logs and slash of many other species will not have much of an effect on the fish. If anything, it provides good cover and places where fish can hide and grow.

The biggest problem of using pine (and to a certain extent, fir), is that they don't sink easily. It takes them a while to become water logged. In general, they also break down faster than most deciduous trees in warmer waters, like you may have in California. In cold lakes like Lake Superior, they stay pretty well preserved for centuries. Yes, there are some reported issues of using softwoods in aquariums because they can leach turpentine. From the little bit that I know about that issue, removing the bark eliminates much of that problem.

For anyone who has fished in Northern Wisconsin, Northern Minnesota, Upper Michigan, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba, many of the lakes and rivers are tea colored. That tea color is because of hardwood tannin from trees like red oaks, white oaks, and a number of other kinds of oaks. If you have fished these tea colored tannin filled waters, think about the monster small mouth bass, pike, walleye and so many other great trophy fish you may have caught.

A little searching will lead you to many great publications similar to this one:

Pond and Lake Fish Cover

Regards,
Ken