I have a new 2 acre pond and have just started adding some brush piles to the perimeter. I have just been using limbs from the trees that they pushed up when digging the pond. I have placed the few that I have made so far about 8-12 feet out from the edge of the water so that the tops of the limbs are just showing. My plan is to have one of these piles every 15-30 yards around the perimeter. I still have some timber standing in the middle but know that it will die out sometime. By using hardwoods I shouldn't increase sediment should I? What diameter limbs are best? Are there any wood types other than soft woods to avoid? Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Watch out Standing dead timber in the water can make a good perch for CORMORANTS (WATER TURKEY) to hang out on when not eating your fish.

Let oak season long enough to let the tanins(sp?) dry and leach out. It is lethal. Test it by putting a piece of oak in non-chlorinated water. If the water changes color in 5 or 6 days, don't use it. After about a week, put a couple of small fish in to see if they live. Bass seem to prefer 'fluffy' structure. I guess it is because they are essentially ambush predators.

DRD II,
If you are looking to create fish structure maybe you would be better served if you would put your structure on the bottom in the form of hardwood pallets and such. It sounds like you are in some shallow water yet. Make sure that you take and tie bricks to the structure as to keep them where you intended them to be. I am not sure what depth that you have or what kind of slope that you have but 8-10 feet are great area to consider for pallets. Hope this helps.

Dave is absolutely right. Be careful about adding too much fresh wood of any kind to your pond in a short time. The tanins (tanic acid) will leach out, and if there's a high enough concentration in your water, it will make it a dead lake - I don't even think frogs will live in it if it's bad enough. I've been told that his test works well, but I just try to limit the amount of fresh wood I put in each year (less than 10 average size Christmas trees per acre) and put in old dry wood and piles of big limestone chunks from the local quarry to supplement that (they have a special pile that they will let me hand load from any time I want totally free).

I appreciate the info guys! My pond depth is 16-18 feet at its deepest point by the spill pipe but an average bottom depth of about 10 feet is what I suspect. I'm going to run a depth finder over it soon and get more details and maybe make a topo map. How do you create the cover using pallets? You can tell I'm new to this pond thing but I really want to make it productive. This is a really informative forum. Heard about you guys from Bill Dance Outdoors forum. Come on over some time if you want to talk fishing! Thanks!