Catching Fish at the Tree Farms

I found an article from the New York Times this morning about California resident Pete Alexander. He heads up a program for the East Bay Regional Park District that collects unsold Christmas trees from tree vendors and turns them into lake structure. As it turns out, Christmas trees make great habitat for several reasons.

According to the story, the trees are the perfect size and weight, and they become algae-covered very quickly. This obviously attracts aquatic insects, which attract small fish, which attract gamefish. The article goes on to discuss Lee Mitchell, a natural resources specialist heading the same project in Illinois. To offer incentive to volunteers, Mitchell gives the GPS coordinates of all tree dumps to any angler that helps him out.

The idea of turning Christmas trees into structure has been around for a while, so I'm curious: any water near you have some on the bottom? There are two lakes close to my house that have spots dubbed the "tree farms." When the county first started dumping trees, I thought they would quickly rot away or cause too many hang-ups. But the "tree farms" in both lakes have produced many a nice bass, big pickerel, and some fat crappies for me.