Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Plastic pallet fish structure advice

Hello All,
I am hoping for a little help on placement and design of some fish structure I am about to make for my pond. I live on a ~3 acre pond that has a very healthy bluegill population and some decent 4-5 lb Largemouth bass. We also have ~3-4lb brown bullheads and crappie. My end of the pond is about 5-6ft deep and the far end gets down to about 17ft. The bottom is pretty mucky, the ponds were built in the 50’s-60’s to the best of my knowledge. My goals are to create additional structure to help with the BG and potentially give crawfish a place to take hold. I have tried trapping crawfish several times with no luck, I think there is just not enough cover for them to escape the bass. I can fill up my minnow traps in no time with BG which I then use to fish for LMB.

I have already created about 10 pvc spike attractors like these:


I placed them where the white lines are on this picture of my dock:


I got my hands on about 12 of these plastic pallets at work, I was thinking of zip tying them together like this to sink and give fish some cover.


or



And advice on how to tie them (stacked bottom to bottom like 1st pic vs in a stack like 2nd pic) or where to sink them? I was thinking of putting a couple directly under the dock to hold BG and then a few out in the deeper water so the fish can move from structure to structure as the water temps change. Any advice is welcome, thanks in advance!

if it were me i would pour concrete into the deep feet of those pallets and use the open holes to attach vertical steaks....the steaks would have some cedar bows attached to about half of them

I like the bottom, but I think you would need 3-4 pallets. First one will sink.

You mean sorta like this? but then have stuff tied to the spacers?




you mean the bottom pic of them stacked? I could flip it over so there would be more surface area where it makes contact with the ground. yea I was thinking of going 3-4 pallets high on the ones for deeper water. Pond is only ~5 ft deep near me so i don't want to go so high that I hit it with my trolling motor of it is visible from the shore.

Thanks for the replies!

combine this



with this

http://www.crappie.com/crappie/attachmen...ke-beds-003-jpg

Make Ts out of the pallets - one for the bottom and the second on its side - like a fence. If you need more vertical than 4 ft then tie 2 in. branches to the standing part of the pallet .

Do the plastic pallets sink?
I think wooden pallets need about 50lbs to sink.

You'll have to weight them down. They will float up on you. Unlike wood, which will sink after it gets waterlogged, plastic pallets wont.

Plastic, as a quick rule, has a specific gravity around 1 g/cm^3. This means that it has a density very close to water...some plastics float a little in water while others kinda sink (plastics hover right around floating or sinking). It should be easier to hold down plastic pallets, especially at first when compared to wood. As the wood water logs its density gets closer to the plastic.

A couple cinder blocks per pallet in the stack should be plenty of weight so long as they are in calmer waters. Keep in mind that plastic is much slicker than wood and if the pallets are not level the weight could eventually slide off.

I never came back to post finished pics... they have been in the water for about 8 months and seem to be working pretty well. I have caught a few crappie on them and prior to them going in, I never caught a single crappie from my dock. The Bass and Bream seem to hang out around them as well.

Look good

Looks good but if you can get more I would just stack them about three high tied together. All of that lattice work would provide good cover for small fish with the larger fish hanging around the ouutside.

With the pallet with that wonderful lattice work sitting on the bottom, sediment could cover up half of it up.

Another way would be to take 4 concrete blocks and zip tie them to the bottom of the pallet. Let the blocks be on the pond bottom raising the pallet off the bottom. Then maybe zip tie another pallet on top of that one. Spacer in between pallets would also give more lattice area.

Or stack three pallets tepee style zip tied together.

Giant extra heavy duty zip ties 3 to 4' long are available in bags of 50 or 100 at HVAC commerial supply stores. They use them to zip tie flexible ducting on to the main duct. They are very reasonably priced when bought in bulk at a professional store. Very high priced bought retail a few at a time. I use them to tie blocks to trees and all sorts of projects around the farm. Keep a bag of them around at all times.

What you did is great. These are just some other potential ideas.

Put more weight than you think you need. Attach it. Voice of experience. My CC or an errant fishing lure has caused some of my plastic to float and end up floating to shore.

I agree with snrub. You can also use nylon trot line string - inexpensive. A short run (2 pallets long) in a T shape can be used to make a fence giving vertical cover - one pallet on bottom and one sticking up. Vertical is the key - use more of your water not just the bottom couture.