Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Which species of natural tree to sink?

My pond project has officially started and I'm looking to sink a whole line of trees down the center of the lake (approximately 12-15' of water). I have access to a lot of scrap 2x4 and other lumber, so my thought was to submerge the trees in a triangle pattern and then nail the 2x4 material between the trees to create smaller gaps for the baitfish to hide in. My logic here is that it will last a heck of a lot longer than the thinner branches and make it much easier to work with. Obviously, I'll leave a few branches on the trees but was planning on thinning them out quite a bit because I have no idea how to erect these things if they have a full canopy on them.

My property has mostly hackberry, elm trees and willows. I do have a few live oak and mesquites, but we were trying to save as many of the Live oak as possible and there's probably only about 6 mesquites that are large enough to do anything with. There are also a lot of properties nearby that are typically looking to get rid of cedar trees. I'm wondering which tree will last the longest or be the best to submerge for cover. I'll likely be targeting trees with a diameter of at least 6".

Thanks in advance

An example. See the structure archive for more info .
https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92463#Post92463

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Cinder blocks are awfully handy since they already have a hole. Just drill a hole in the cedar trunk a few inches above the bottom.

I usually have some heavy, galvanized electric fence wire in the truck. I use 14 gauge for all types of farm projects, but they may carry some even heavier wire at your local farm supply.

Some of the guys on the forum will put 2-4 trees together on a single weight if the pond is really barren of cover. That makes a nice little brush pile. If the trees all settle outwards, then you can usually drag a lure right through the middle of the brush pile and sample the fish using your cover.

If you are going to put them in deeper water where you can't see the tops, then it is usually a good idea to mark them with a float. Bleach bottle, duck decoy, whatever your wife will NOT yell at you for placing in her pretty pond!

If you don't have a boat or a drought to place them, you might be able to get them placed fairly well when your pond is iced over. On a small 3/4 acre pond, hopefully your ice break up won't let them drift too far before they finally melt through.

Well we don’t get any ice to speak of…. Only one time when it got to -1

I used Osage Orange, which will be there until pushed out by a glacier during the next Ice Age.

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.

Here's a few more.

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