what is the deal with using christmas trees to build brush piles, what i want know is why not they are same as a ceader tree.

The reason most use them is because they are plentiful around christmas time and are easy to get. I like willows myself.

Christmas trees are very thick and don't provide much cover for bigger fish to get into. Limbs are so thick that sometimes even minnows don't like them. Thin out the limbs and they work much better. And you won't hang up as much.

I brush out my boat slip with Christmas trees every year and the crappie love them. Ken is right when he says to cut out some of the limbs. I do that to make holes for the fish to hide in and I have had much success.

watch out for trees that may have been treated with chemicals,
not good for fish or the water.

Has anyone ever tied bottles to the top to keep them verticle, cover more for suspended fish rather than just letting them lay on the bottom?

I will occationally still put out a condo or a fake tree





but mostly I like to just drag something off the shore and sink it.

Like Ernest"
http://texasfishingforum.com/forums/ubbt...ons#Post6769728

Waves cause current in lakes and things standing up in the water column tend to move around. Most fish don't like their home moving around a lot. Suspended trees and especially those with an anchor on the bottom and jug on the top tend to sway a lot with the waves. Better to have it stationary so it provides stable sanctuary.

I tie a jug in the tree close to the top... Here is one that I put out next to two rows of stick condos... I have caught a ton of crappie around this structure...
You can see crappie at the top of the first row of condos & crappie just to the left of the tree.
I wish I had a dozen more structures like this...

+1

At my dock on Palo Pinto, I tie 3 in a vertical column so it covers the water column top to bottom. On a dock you have the luxury of having exact placement and easy maintenance. The brushyness wears off pretty soon and they have to be replaced. I have heard that they don't like cedar oil, but this could be someone's bald faced opinion. Could be hard evidence of it, but I haven't seen it.

Well after thinking about this for a few years now and after seeing just how easy it is to injure and kill a crappie I think the Christmas tree pile is Too dangerous for a crappie to back into one.The Willow on the other hand is soft.Any fish that gets scraped quite possably will die,so would "you" take a chance on death to hang out in one if you were a crappie?imo