Ahhh, home. Every person, every creature, and every critter needs a place to live. For certain wildlife, it is a den, a nest, a cavity in a tree, or a burrow in the ground.

For fish, the domicile perspective is quite different. They spend much of their life on the move, roaming and traveling from one locale to another.

But many species that live in rivers, lakes, ponds, and reservoirs have a fairly distinct range, a broad area that offers both food sources and a relative degree of safety. This is where they spend most of their time. And often, they make this place their home because of the presence of structure.

Not structure as in something they constructed, but structure as in anything that creates a change in the depth or the contour of the bottom. Structure gives microorganisms a surface to cling to, it gives small fish places to hide and feed on those tiny creatures, and it gives larger fish a place to ambush and feed on smaller fish.

Shipwrecks provide one of the best places to fish in the open ocean, simply because they provide structure in an otherwise contour-less expanse, and the food pyramid starts to build at the site almost as soon as the ship hits the bottom.

WATCH: Tim Gallaher, natural resources crew leader with Metroparks Toledo

That essential structure — rocks, stumps, logs, and sections of trees in this case — is being put in place in the seven-acre lake that is under construction at the new Cannonball Prairie Metropark site on Monclova Road, where former farmland is being converted back into a native prairie landscape.

Currently, there’s very little water in this carved-out basin, but once it fills up with the fall and winter precipitation, there will be structure in place to provide ideal habitat for the largemouth bass, channel catfish, bluegills, crappie, and fathead minnows that Metroparks biologists expect to stock here.

“For fish, structure is very important, almost as important as the water itself, since fish are very structure oriented,” said Bob Barnhart, a structure-conscious bass fisherman and the owner of Maumee-based tackle supplier Netcraft. “With good, properly placed structure, you will end up with a healthier lake and one that is better able to sustain its fish populations.”

Earthmovers sculpted the lake, and heavy equipment positioned the structure, all while following a detailed plan designed by the Ohio-based environmental engineering firm EnviroScience. At one end of the lake there will be a wetland that some of the fish species are expected to utilize for spawning.

“The water depth will likely fluctuate a bit seasonally, but the main area of the lake should be around 16 feet deep,” said Tim Gallaher, natural resources crew leader with Metroparks Toledo. “Since this is a new lake, this site provides us with the opportunity to do all of this structure work from the ground up, and create some outstanding fish habitat.”

He said the rock piles and submerged wood that compose the bulk of the structure should quickly become populated with colonies of macroinvertebrates, and these will in turn serve as a food source that attracts small fish. There will be close to 45 of these fish structures in place once the new lake begins to fill.

“What we expect to end up with is a fairly ideal fishing hole,” Gallaher said. A nearby drainage ditch should provide populations of frogs and other aquatic creatures that will move into the lake.

“These things do work like a magnet,” Barnhart said. “Some fish will lay their eggs on the structure, and then the structure serves as a safe haven or sanctuary for the hatchlings and juvenile fish, giving them a place to grow big enough so they can eventually move around in a lake where there’s a lot of predators.”

While the lake will likely need a stabilization period of several years once it fills with water and is stocked with fish, the new park is expected to open, in part, by late this fall. The park is located at the former site of Springer Farms, between Weckerly and Eber Roads, along the North Fork of the Wabash Cannonball Trail.

Much of the land was formerly used for row crop agriculture, and Gallaher said that during the construction phase for the new park, much work was done to remove noxious weeds and invasive plants such as thistle, phragmites, and purple loosestrife.

The park district purchased 89 acres at the site in 2013, with the expressed intention of creating a new park that would serve as a stopping point on the Wabash Cannonball Trail in western Lucas County. A 12-acre mature oak forest is part of that larger parcel.

Cannonball Prairie Metropark will form another connection along the Oak Openings Corridor, and when completed this link and its series of trails will connect five Metroparks and three state nature preserves.

Contact Blade outdoors editor Matt Markey at mmarkey@theblade.com or 419-724-6068.

First Published August 23, 2018, 6:00 p.m.