All issues related to the maintenance of mountain rivers engineering structures, especially to river banks reinforcement, are extremely important to river engineering and flood protection works. The selection of appropriate hydraulic structures depends on many factors. When designing such devices, one should take into account, among other things, the type of soil, the hydrodynamic conditions, the atmospheric phenomena and the chemical condition of the water. Examples of hydraulic structures include weirs, gabions, rip-rap, boulder ramps etc. Efficient operation thereof depends on the careful execution of those structures. In case of the rip-rap revetments, there is a number of guidelines specifying the required physical and mechanical characteristics of the crushed stone used. In the present paper we discusses the methods of river bank protection, and we present the selection of rip-rap by defining technical specifications for the size of the crushed stones, the rip-rap, and the filter bed used in this context. In particular, we focus on the quality of the filter material used for the laying of crushed stones. Filtering material is laid directly underneath the rip-rap, and its faulty selection may often lead to failure of river bank reinforcement structures. For this paper we have analysed three rip-rap revetment structures within the town of Nowy Targ. A number of granulometric measurements and rip-rap sloping gradients were carried out at each station. Two stability conditions, and one permeability condition have been tested.