Are cedar trees toxic?

I have been building and sinking brush lately mainly using hackberry and cedar trees/juniper i think. I live in central tx and everyone here calls them cedars, i do not know the exact type. Anyways one of my crappie friends came by during the building process and strarted yelling ohh noo man what are you doin trying to kill the fish!??! I looked with complete confusion saying wth are you talking about. He explained that the sap an tree itself has a toxin that kills fish and basically anything that tries to eat it.

any proof to this because i found very little explanation on google and i love how dense a cedar is plus they seem to last for ahwile in my lake at least

also what is the best tree to put out, im sure some have more sugars an others will last longer due to hardness but what would be the absolute prime tree type to sink.

Well all the fish in Enid should be dead as they have used cedar trees for the last 21 yrs. I know of . :popcorn

:hesaid Cedar trees are ok.

Haha thats what i thought. any ideas as to which tree is the best?
Take out the location factor, consider its already in the best location what would you sink

Check this forum out here on crappie.com about fish habitat and structures it has a whole lot of information to help you.
http://www.crappie.com/crappie/crapp...and-pond-mgmt/

hardwood would work best for long term !!! but cedar and pine trees are good to use to get a brush pile started and then go back and add the hard wood to it !!!

I have used cedar for years. I gather the cedar and set it aside so the green stuff dries out. Takes about a year to dry. The wood also lightens up because the water in the trunk evaporates too. This makes it much easier to sink. I prepare the cedar by trimming most of the fine branches so to prevent hang ups. I also torch the fine stuff.

You can sink a lot of cedar with a cement block this way. I also have a dedicated boat for dumping the cedar and other stuff. It is a 12 foot Coleman Crawdad. I added a front deck that I can tilt remotely with an electric ram. Did this cause Ima getting too old to cut the mustard anymore.

Photobucket wants ransom money for my personal videos on the crawdad. They are calling my videos 3rd party hosting. Of course, I told them where to put their 3rd party hosting claim.

From what I understand most trees are fine, but do not use a Black walnut tree as it will ruin any great crappie hole from what I understand!

Skip

once cedar dries out it will be ok, hangy but ok, around here if you put it in green, it will take 6 months to a year before crappie will move in.

Cane pole: i saw that on a video yesterday, slapped myself for not thinkin of that haha brilliant idea and you hardly have to mess with getting jabbed poked or possibly pulled in when dumping trees.
Skip: i read somewhere on google that walnut was a no no actually found more on walnut being bad than cedar

I put mine in green thinking maybe a month at most but i suppose i way underestimated the power of those little green needle things haha dying an dead cedar sounds better, i know from just searching that dead wood is much easier to work with, i believe ill do a dead center with fresh cut willow branches surrounding maybe? Who knew dropping trees in a lake was so much fun, idk if it's the excitement of possibly having a secret honey hole or if i just like the splash and see the tree slowly disappear hahaha

Hedge aka Boisdearc sounds bo dark, locust, popular, works great. channel edges,and bends, ends of tree rows ( make yours first before first one you can see) they like the first cover near the channel, in summer and winter, rock slides along steep bluffs:twocents

Well its a big bowl of a turn about 300 feet inside of a creek that feeds into the main river (brazos river) baren of trees drops from 0-5, 5-12, 12-32 depending on water levels

Willows are the best as algae grow fast and food sources of small fish ... Never use walnut as green hulls soaked will chase worms out of the ground but kills the worms. Cain is used a lot here in the South but the worse stuff to try to fish, loosing jigs and fish tangling in the stuff. Crappie Condos on U-Tube looks to be the best and dont rot

In your part of the country them bodark, hedge Apple like ozark ranger said are the best you can put in. Use the dried out cedes in clumps then put the hard woods in around them. That bo dark will out last us. Just watch them thorns when working it.

Aewsome! Time to hunt down some bodark and apple, i wonder if i could go to a orchard and ask them for some trimmings

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Originally Posted by Crappiedayz

Aewsome! Time to hunt down some bodark and apple, i wonder if i could go to a orchard and ask them for some trimmings

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I bet they would be glad to let you have them.

osage orange lasts forever also called hedge .

Grampa used to go fishing with a burlap sack of black walnut that had been ran over with a tractor 20 times or so . Scaley fish would come up and get dipped . Any slough on the tombigbee river was a target for sure . I was told rotenone was made from this nut as well . Used to poison pools/lakes .

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Originally Posted by eagle 1

Grampa used to go fishing with a burlap sack of black walnut that had been ran over with a tractor 20 times or so . Scaley fish would come up and get dipped . Any slough on the tombigbee river was a target for sure . I was told rotenone was made from this nut as well . Used to poison pools/lakes .

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It really does not poison the water....Rotenone takes the oxygen out

If cedar trees killed fish, my home lake, Taylorsville, would be the dead sea. I assure you it isn't.

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Originally Posted by Quailtail

If cedar trees killed fish, my home lake, Taylorsville, would be the dead sea. I assure you it isn't.

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Yeah, and most of the rest of the lakes in the state of KY !! The KDFWR uses them to make brushpiles in most of the lakes in the state.

And I once heard that certain kinds of pine trees wouldn't hold Crappie, then found that to also not be the case after I caught many a Slab from them down in Tenn.

Wow didnt know rotenone came from a walnut.
I often wonder how people come up with cedar trees being toxic an other wild fishing stories

If there is current, place your piles outside the current on a channel swing, the baitfish and all species of fish will hide from the current, don't know how the lake is with the thermocline here the TC is about 19' my piles are no less than 20' deep at power pool. the fish may not be clear down to the top of the piles but will suspend around the area. use your electronics and fish that depth.:twocents

Great advice! Im not sure if we even have a thermocline, never could see it on the graph. Lake whitney constantly has water coming from lakes above and then continues to push it south. Is a thermocline possible with the lake basically flushing/running constantly. Not saying that all lakes are just big ol ponds an they dont move water but my father and i have never been able to find it nore our local bass club.
I have buckets in a line starting shallow to deep, the shallow ones 6ft, deep ones 18-30 and with only 2 weeks in the water have a incredible amount of baitfish/bluegill/ an baby bass. Yet to catch anything over 6" but its only been two weeks... And talk about fun! Making your own lures is one thing but making a brush pile and having your own little honey hole is something else

sounds like you are off to a good start, the bigger fish will come. another place to start is First ice out if applicable the crappie will start up the creeks and into mouths of bays/coves. place them near the center where the shallower water starts. all spiecies of fish will stage on these just before going to spawning banks
wish I had a map to mark for you.

The fastest natural cover to attract crappie hands down is willow , it won't last in the water very long though , very soft and may be almost gone by the end of the second year or sooner . The in the know folks around here say the best ever is a big oak with large limbs if you want to hold big crappie and it will last a very long time . As for Myself I sink whatever I can on natural cover , I pay no attention to what wood and lean towards will it make good cover to drop a jig in and hold crappie as well . ...the cedar is poisonous claims I have seen best I can tell is fictitious and I know the state puts cedar in some of the state parks as well .
My take on it

Yeah i watched two videos on corp lakes dropping cedar. But i love to get different opinions especially from more experienced fishermen haha. So far my main stash of buckets conclude central cedar tree with willow limbs around it, put in some hackberry and cedar no idea how thatll go but im kinda like you i grab what looks good an sink it lol

Cedar trees are fine

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