Well, I just finished the bottom structure in my pond and it was a mad dash to get structure in before it started raining today. I ended up with a mixture of hackberry, elm and mesquite. We ended up finding a lot more mesquite than I originally thought was on the property. The pro to the mesquite is that it was pretty much growing all crooked, so when putting it on the bank it made for a much more interesting piece of structure than just a flat lying straight tree. We ended up using most of the scrap 2x4 as stakes that we pounded into the ground and then used stainless steel screws to fasten the stakes to the trunks of the trees. Really hoping this will work because it was quite a bit of work. Not sure if it saved any money or not, the 2x4 material was free however the screws were around $75. Cinder blocks and wire are the back up plan if the trees start floating up. I still have a lot more work positioning and staking down the trees that are in shallower water. Just needed the deep stuff done in case the lake filled up a few feet. Despite having a few buddies that wanted me to harvest cedars from their land, we just completely ran out of time. In the future when I need to add more brush I'll pull it from their properties, but I only had two days to get as much done as I could. I did sink two rows of trees vertically down the widest parts of the pond. It looks pretty awesome. We used concrete on those to keep them down but unfortunately ran out of concrete. So I'm confident some will stay down. I will try and post some pics.
