Planting Stucture in a gravel pit

I have a 2 acre gravel pit in NW Iowa and I want to plant some structure on it before the ice goes out.

I’m planning to use 5-gallon buckets filled with sack-crete and cedar branches……hoping to get the cedars to stand straight up instead of laying on the bottom.

Anyone have experience in this or have any ideas on what to sink out there??

I have bass and bluegills in the pond.

Eric Naig

maybe next year you can add some discarded Christmas trees for some structure at a low cost to you. I know up on Red Lake they made around 50 or so “crappie cribs” and sank them to give the fish some protection and some structure to attract the baitfish. I believe the cribs were 6’x6’x6′ and were made out of logs?? Good luck.

The two most common things I’ve seen are Christmas trees and manmade structures from old pallets. They are usually nailed in a triangle /_\ and set on the ice with cinder-blocks in the middle to sink them.

If you don’t want the plastic buckets down there, you could probably achieve the same results pouring the bases on painter’s plastic using a piece of lawn edging wrapped around on itself as a form. The plastic form should just peel off and leave a concrete circle. That way you could make the base a little wider so that it doesn’t tip as easily when you snag it.

Thanks for the ideas.

Here’s what I did yesterday:

I got some old steel well pipe and drove it into the pond bottom, leaving a couple feet sticking out of the water for a marker for the brush pile. Next, I will drill a hole in the bottom of a 5-gal bucket and put in a piece of PVC that will slide over the well rod I have pounded into the pond bottom.

Then I will fill bucket with sack-crete and arrange the branches to form the brush pile.

I will also try the pallet idea, thanks.

Eric Naig

Sunken truck tires make good catfish habitat.

Hawger