Sinking Trees?!

What's the best way to anchor a 7' Christmas tree to the bottom of the lake?

I was thinking of drilling a hole in the base and running wire through it and then wrap the wire around a cinder block at the base and drop the tree over to let it sink. The base is about 4'to 5" thick and I was wondering if only one block would hold it down.

Also is it better to have them standing up or laying on their side?

I have about ten trees to put out. How many should I put in each area I want the fish to gather? I will be dropping them near drop offs close to creek channels in about 15' to 20' of water.

Any ideas or suggestions are helpful.

We use lay down Christmas trees for shallow water, this is for fry and minnows to survive after the spawns...for deeper water, and for Crappie to use, they need to be upright...you can tie them to blocks with nylon rope, etc, or vinyl coated cable and clamps....we went the cable and clamp route because we have a dam that we had to take into consideration.
You can also run 4 bolts into the bottom of the tree and set in a bucket of cement, or use another type of cement base!
Our group set out several thousands of Christmas Trees over the 8 yrs we worked on our lake, and used them in various configurations.

We drill a hole thru base of tree and attach 1-2 blocks according to size of tree .

I just cut off the lower branches to about 10" and slide the trunk through the block until the cut branches make their way through the block. Now that it's locked in place, slide it in the water. You don't get much choice how they land, but they seem to hold fish.

I try to stand them in a group in line or circle up to 4 feet away from each other. Tie a cotton cord, kite string and a plastic bottle to the top so I know where each is located. It will take a few trips to shore to drop a lot of trees. After I finish I cut the bottles off.

As Intimidator said, with literally several thousand "C" trees and sundry various other types of both natural and artificial attractors under our belt you`ll have to pardon if we sound like `experts`...

Hopefully we do not come off as "Know-it-alls"....we are just trying to help anyone else avoid the mistakes we made, and learn what we have discovered at our lake....we just want to help people build and place cover to improve their fishing or their fishery...hopefully we have learned a few helpful things in 8 yrs, that we can pass along!:)
The only real difference in our experiences are if you are fishing "Gin Clear" waters...but I have worked on a few Mountain pit ponds in SC also!

Oh I for one appreciate the tips and info!
I will be using the double cinder blocks and tie two to each tree then tie a 12" piece of foam tubing noodle to keep it upright and then loosely tie another 12" of foam to float to surface so I can see where it comes to rest, then I will pull the string loose to remove the floating foam and mark my location. I will place 4-5 trees in each loaction then give them a few weeks and try them out.
Thanks again for all the help!
Attachment 184299

To give you an idea just how well ours turned out, our 1st drop was in mid March, SW Ohio; ice had just come off the lake. Terry Judy our dropper comes by and looks at the 1st spot, fish alarm on his sonar on. He makes a pass to orientate himself and "splashes the 1st 8 "C" trees on his second pass from 8 to 15 fow in a line. He distinctly remembered marking 2 small fish. 30 minutes later with the next 8 "C" trees he again does an orientation pass to line up for "splash" #2 when his fish alarm starts going off like a broken alarm clock. He makes another pass and drops them, comes back and insists that go back with him. He makes another orientation pass and I`m estatic, thinking we just found the "Mother Lode" of fish ! He quite calmly tells me "No, we just MADE the `Mother Lode` of fish !" With an ultra light and jig he managed to hook and throw back 6 fish in under 5 minutes that weren`t apparently even there 1 hr previously...

On the Christmas trees do i need to wait for the needles to fall off before sinking?