Minnow traps

Millsertime

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Does anybody on here trap minnows? I inherited a 16' Lund last fall and plan to fish some lakes this year. Yes, I'll be spin fishing but I'm excited to get back into actually. Anyway, does anybody trap minnows? I have an UNT to Tunkhannock creek (Monroe Cty) next to my house and I thought there would be minnows it but I'm only catching small brookies which I knew were there already.

So if anyone has experience...What kind of creeks are best to catch minnows, fatheads, creek chubs, etc...? Thanks.
 

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Dear Millsertime,

I still net minnies every now and then. I have a metal trap that I toss a couple of slices of rolled up bread into and drop in the water and just wait. If you know you have a good minnow spot the 3' square nets are hard to beat. Again, some bread usually does the trick. Carp dough bait and even catfish bait nuggets, yes you can tell I still fish bait, also work to draw fish into the trap or net. 😉

Regards,

Tim Murphy 🙂
 
I trap minnows year round. You might just need to go down stream. Could be a little bit too cold of water. Try bridges, confluence and culvert holes. I like bread and a couple pieces of dog food and an opened can of tuna. The full buffet 😉. Make sure you use a silver minnow trap. (Which it looks like you have.) The black ones scare them. The silver outcatch the black ones 46:1. I’ve done quite a bit of research and experimenting over about 30 years.

Oddly enough, I don’t really ever fish with minnows. I just like catching them. I also use them to feed my pet Toebiter.(Giant water bug) Only pet I’ve had for probably 5 years and my second Toebiter in a row as a pet.

Here is my Toebiter chomping down on a fat Black nose dace. He has eaten fish as big as a 12” golden shiner. He shoots them with a paralyzing agent and then sucks them dry like a vampire. That is his snorkel reaching up to the water’s surface.
IMG_7626.jpeg


~5footfenwick
 
I trap minnows year round. You might just need to go down stream. Could be a little bit too cold of water. Try bridges, confluence and culvert holes. I like bread and a couple pieces of dog food and an opened can of tuna. The full buffet 😉. Make sure you use a silver minnow trap. (Which it looks like you have.) The black ones scare them. The silver outcatch the black ones 46:1. I’ve done quite a bit of research and experimenting over about 30 years.

Oddly enough, I don’t really ever fish with minnows. I just like catching them. I also use them to feed my pet Toebiter.(Giant water bug) Only pet I’ve had for probably 5 years and my second Toebiter in a row as a pet.

Here is my Toebiter chomping down on a fat Black nose dace. He has eaten fish as big as a 12” golden shiner. He shoots them with a paralyzing agent and then sucks them dry like a vampire. That is his snorkel reaching up to the water’s surface.
View attachment 1641240688

~5footfenwick
Cool! Never seen one of them kept as a pet. Did you buy it from somewhere, or just catch a wild one?
 
Dear Millsertime,

I still net minnies every now and then. I have a metal trap that I toss a couple of slices of rolled up bread into and drop in the water and just wait. If you know you have a good minnow spot the 3' square nets are hard to beat. Again, some bread usually does the trick. Carp dough bait and even catfish bait nuggets, yes you can tell I still fish bait, also work to draw fish into the trap or net. 😉

Regards,

Tim Murphy 🙂
Everything about this is right out of my playbook.

Only one thing to add: sewn minnows are the way to go, especially through mid May. Perfect for large and smallmouth all season.

It’s pretty much a guaranteed mouth hook set, so catch and release is an option.
 
I catch them, canoeing at night while top water fishing largemouth on ponds and lakes. Turn on the headlamp to retie and see them swimming in the weeds near the surface and just net them. The first one I just wanted to learn about it. Maybe tie a fly to resemble it. Learn about how it feeds. But after feeding it everything from grasshoppers, to wolf spiders to night crawlers to different species of fish. It was just too cool not to keep. When the first one died after about a year and a half, I got a second one. He just died after about two years. They make a good pet. Only need to eat a couple times a month. Clean the water once a month. Very low maintenance. Let’s me do camping and fishing trips without having to worry about a cat or dog being taken care of. I will say that I’m still a little scared to pet a Toebiter though. The bite is supposed to be quite unpleasant. 🙂

~5footfenwick
 
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Got any beaver dams close by? If so try the slow water they create. Little "ponds" less than the size of a swimming pool are where I was catching ice fishing bait this past winter.
 
Oddly enough, I don’t really ever fish with minnows. I just like catching them. I also use them to feed my pet Toebiter.(Giant water bug) Only pet I’ve had for probably 5 years and my second Toebiter in a row as a pet.
Creepiest animal I ever observed. I watched one deflate a frog when I was a kid. I stopped wading in bare feet for a long time after that.
My youngest son was challenged by his middle school science teacher to bring in minnows for the classroom aquarium. They were to get one point on their grade for every minnow that was brought in. After 20 minutes next to a local country club water hazard with a dip net and bucket, he had so many fish that the teacher had to impose a limit.
 
Does anybody on here trap minnows? I inherited a 16' Lund last fall and plan to fish some lakes this year. Yes, I'll be spin fishing but I'm excited to get back into actually. Anyway, does anybody trap minnows? I have an UNT to Tunkhannock creek (Monroe Cty) next to my house and I thought there would be minnows it but I'm only catching small brookies which I knew were there already.

So if anyone has experience...What kind of creeks are best to catch minnows, fatheads, creek chubs, etc...? Thanks.
So much for wild trout being too “sophisticated” to be bread eaters like hatchery trout. You’re probably “killing” the ST fanatics here with that pic. Anyway, I learned about wild BT eating bread with reckless abandon when I lived in an apartment next to a narrow wild BT stream and saw a female neighbor, who knew nothing about fishing or trout, standing immediately next to a small pool on the creek one day feeding the trout with bread. No fear on the parts of the wild BT as apparently they had become habituated like stocked trout in a hatchery raceway.

If you live close to the Susquehanna or Schuylkill, many tribs have good spotfin shiner populations fall through mid-spring, as there is movement from the rivers into the tribs by good numbers of shiners.In my experience you can find a lot in pools within a the few hundred yards of the mouth or in the case of the Susquehanna power dams, up the creeks within the slackwater and a little farther up the naturally flowing parts of the creeks. Warm may be better in these cases too, but I know of a stream where this occurs that is a good wild BT stream too. When the water is very cold, as in winter, even these fish seek cover, such as under a large boulder that extends out from a stream bank and provides overhead cover in quiet water. Also, I am not suggesting that these streams do not have populations year around, but the numbers are probably lower once the migrants leave for the season.

As for fathead populations in streams, they are largely a rarity in Pa. There are a few, narrow, jump across or nearly so, limestoners on Lancaster Co farms that have great populations of some of the largest fatheads that you will find, but a strong limiting factor on where fathead populations are found anywhere is their inhibited reproductive behavior in the presence of what we would consider to be standard predatory fish. The Lancaster Co streams of which I speak are predator free.
 
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So much for wild trout being too “sophisticated” to be bread eaters like hatchery trout. You’re probably “killing” the ST fanatics here with that pic. Anyway, I learned about wild BT eating bread with reckless abandon when I lived in an apartment next to a narrow wild BT stream and saw a female neighbor, who knew nothing about fishing or trout, standing immediately next to a small pool on the creek one day feeding the trout with bread. No fear on the parts of the wild BT as apparently they had become habituated like stocked trout in a hatchery raceway.

If you live close to the Susquehanna or Schuylkill, many tribs have good spotfin shiner populations fall through mid-spring, as there is movement from the rivers into the tribs by good numbers of shiners.In my experience you can find a lot in pools within a the few hundred yards of the mouth or in the case of the Susquehanna power dams, up the creeks within the slackwater and a little farther up the naturally flowing parts of the creeks. Warm may be better in these cases too, but I know of a stream where this occurs that is a good wild BT stream too. When the water is very cold, as in winter, even these fish seek cover, such as under a large boulder that extends out from a stream bank and provides overhead cover in quiet water. Also, I am not suggesting that these streams do not have populations year around, but the numbers are probably lower once the migrants leave for the season.

As for fathead populations in streams, they are largely a rarity in Pa. There are a few, narrow, jump across or nearly so, limestoners on Lancaster Co farms that have great populations of some of the largest fatheads that you will find, but a strong limiting factor on where fathead populations are found anywhere is their inhibited reproductive behavior in the presence of what we would consider to be standard predatory fish. The Lancaster Co streams of which I speak are predator free.
Thanks for the detailed response. I was taking to a guy at beltzville last fall that was netting some kind of minnow with a throw net and then fishing with them. He had 30 to 40 minnows in his bucket. And was doing very well catching fish with them. That got me the idea of trying to trap my own because I hate going to bait shops or maybe the bait shops aren’t open when one wants to go fishing. Since I had a stream right next to the house I figured I’d start there, but I’m gonna guess the water temperature is way too cold as it holds brook trout year around.

If I try the minnow net on property that does not belong to me, I’m guessing I’m going to have to see what the rules are if there are any. Maybe there are rules on private property too, it was just a quick one day trial on my land that was not successful minnow wise. FYI… the brook is was released successfully.
 
I have caught my fair share of minnows, I grew up getting them with seine nets. Typically from small direct tribs to the West Branch Susquehanna or other large freestoners in NCPA. Some ag influence seems to boost the bnd and creek chub populations. 15 min with the seine net gave plenty of minnows for a day of trout fishing. Growing up, we usually used minnows targetting rising water immediately post thunderstorm. We used the traps to hold our minnows captured via seine net so that we were ready to go on short notice.
 
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