Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat 2012 Artificial Habitat Colony

Our public lake has been down about 10-15 ft. so we have been working on three areas, trying to improve living and spawning areas for our dismal bluegill population and some areas to attract bass. Gotta give all the credit to fellow PB peeps. We got all the ideas from the artificial structure thread(s) on here.

I like that. Enough variety for everybody.

Great work folks, the fish are gonna' love it!

I'd pour a few bags of dry concrete mix in that barrel you won't want that floating around if your string rots or storms move the branch off of it.. Looks awesome though..

Good observation BGK. I made some stakes for it, and the PVC trees, by welding a 1" nub at a 45* angle on a 2' piece of rebar and used a sledge hammer to drive them down. Look closely at the bottom right side of the barrel. Its hooked into the lowest hole. As an after thought, we used some 300# test line and tied it off to the tree limb. If you don't see a cinder block holding down the Christmas trees, its because they are tied off with the 300# test line. Now we're waiting on the rainy season, which is now.

The concrete still wouldn't hurt you'll never have to worry about it floating up..

Well BGK, you spoke wisdom. The heavy, long-lasting tropical rains came and the lake is almost at full pool. Some of the structures have floated up and/or away. I thought one cinder block would be enough, but with Christmas trees also tied to them, that is more bouyency than one cinder block can handle. At least most of the stuff is still in place. Live and learn I guess.

Post some pics of the flooded structure if you can. I would like to compare before and after pics.

Thanks

Here is one of before:




And After:

Looks very good. Did you assess the need for more/improved spawning beds for the BG ? There is info here on what to do in a drawdown to help out different problems. Structure is one. Planting grass in areas to be flooded is another as is enhanced spawning areas. The obvious ones are dirt work if needed and refurbishing facilities (docks , boat ramps , beaches etc). One not often thought of is rock piles near grass for craws. I would have put some rock inside that barrel and around it for craws also on that underwater point with the other structure.

Good ideas EW. The first three pics are habitat targeted for BGs. The fourth pics is targeted for bass. Since our lake needs more forage fish, I figure its best to provide places for them to live/thrive before adding more in to the lake. Its difficult to establish artificial or enhanced spawning areas since the BG like a certain water level to spawn in. Our lake is an irrigation resevoir, the water levels fluctuate 10-12 feet on an irregular basis, but we still try to do what we can.

We have some clay points underwater that run from the shore out into the lake. They have BG beds on them at depth from 1 ft to 15 ft. See pic below for example ( that is looking at a point at shore and it runs out under the camera location and beyond to about 15 ft water depth).