Does anyone bait their structure?

When I was around 15 or so my cousin and I would pickup the christmas trees that were put out by the road after christmas. Tie them to cinder blocks and use them for structure.

We would also tie a cheap can of dog food to the cinder block and punch lots of holes in it. The dog food (or so we would think would happen) would attract lots of minnows in turn attracting bigger crappie.

Those spots we dropped would always produce within a week or so and hold good amounts.

Just wondering if no one else thought of this or is there some law against it or is every one else also doing this and just not mentioning it?