Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Structure Under My Dock...

I am considering putting some structure under my dock to attract fish and am looking for suggestions on what to use? A cedar tree or maybe some concrete construction blocks???

Input would be appreciated. It is 12'6" under the hole, 8.6" at the near edge of the deck and 14' at the far edge.

I'd stuff a bunch of cedar trees under the dock from shallow water to the back side (shore side) of the dock (like a "T" shape following the edge of the dock) and make piles of rocks about 12" dia on each of the sides of the dock coming up off the bottom about 4' high continuing on from shallow to deep water. Leave the deepest part of the dock open to the deep water. So a "T" shape of cedars then 2 rock fingers coming up off the edges of the top of the "T".

If you know how much the water fluctuates, I'd only put the cedars so the topmost branches will still be underwater at the low pool level. I'd put enough cedars under the dock so they are all touching each other. Either stand them up vertical inside concrete blocks and cut off the tops so they aren't sticking out of the water, or tie them to concrete blocks with paracord and let them sink and lay horizontally on the bottom. Try to keep the majority of the rocks/cedars under the pier to make fishing easier and to minimize tangles.

The cedars will make a highway going from shallow water to deep water. The rocks will allow small fish/crayfish cover to hide in, which in turn will attract the larger fish.

Wood and rocks together seem to work better than either of the two by themselves. I don't know why.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Just make sure you don’t get so many cedars that you can’t fish them. I learned that one the hard way.,

I'm wondering if I would actually put any structure directly under the dock as it could impact fish through that cut-out hole in the dock floor.

Layering structure all around the dock (but excluding the deep/open water side like Scott said) seems like a winner.