Report: Effectiveness of borax/salt treated cisco (Good news update!)

[Mike Stark]

Steve if you wish to share it, what ratio of Borax/Salt do you use in the cure mix. Average dose time per pound....ect. If I missed it on a precious post, I apologies for the redundant question.

I plan to try to cure up some Mooneye/Goldeye, and give your system a go.

Thanks,

ed. the bait has to be preserved by a licensed dealer. steve bought preserved ciscos from a bait shop. if i understand the regs right you are not allowed to preserve your own ciscos/smelt unless your are a licensed dealer. mooneye/goldeye may be a different story.

[Ed Carlson]

I'm doing Goldeye, not smelt nor cisco's...ND has no regs against that.

[Mike Stark]

I'm doing Goldeye, not smelt nor cisco's...ND has no regs against that.

Lucky!

[JBMasterAngler]

I wouldn't treat the goldeye with anything if I were you. Just freeze them. The rule only applies to cisco/smelt.

[deadeye]

I wouldn't treat the goldeye with anything if I were you. Just freeze them. The rule only applies to cisco/smelt.

Bingo. Everything else that was legal for frozen bait is still legal for frozen bait. No need to mess around with preserving them in some sick solution of chemicals.

[wahoo]

Asked this question on another forum with no response. Can you use sardines or mackeral or other oily saltwater fish? I don't see anything about it in the regulations.

If so I'll bring some to Minn for ice fishing since the report on treated smelt is not encouraging.

Thanks,

[deadeye]

There is nothing saying you can't do that. I honestly didn't even think about sardines. If you can get some that are fresh or simply frozen they would be perfect. They are probably more greasy than ciscos are. Hmmm.... yet another idea to try. Plus if your not catching anything they would fry up nice on the mr heater.

[wahoo]

deadeye,

I can get them from the boat I fish in San Diego. The sardines are oily, but pacific macks are REALLY oily. Just thought I'd try some.

wahoo

[reinhard1]

we discussed this some time ago on a similar thread. here in the cities you can get frozen sardines and mackerel in korean grocery stores. i'm glad you guy's brought this up again. the place i go to to get spices and other items [korean store], i have seen these smaller smelt cisco size frozen sardines that i think would be awsome. to be safe i will call the dnr and see if they have an issue with it. maby save the reciept and bag they came in also. i swear they [frozen sardines] look a lot like smelt and cisco. good luck.

[LMITOUT]

Bingo. Everything else that was legal for frozen bait is still legal for frozen bait. No need to mess around with preserving them in some sick solution of chemicals.

So frozen smelt are OK to use in MN? We used to buy bags of frozen smelt at the grocery store when I lived in ND and they were fantastic for pike. I guess I need to brush up on the new reg.

[deadeye]

Nope. In the emergency regulations that I saw on the dnr site ciscos and smelt now have to be preserved by a licensed dealer. I guess since a lot of the ciscos and smelt come from Superior they are making this process happen to prevent the spread of VHS. Its a bummer they don't just make it for the ones that are sourced from Superior but I suppose that would be pretty tough to enforce so they have to make it a blanket regulation.

If you go to the MN DNR site and type cisco in the search function it pops up with a PDF at the 4th or 5th line. I will post up a link if its ok..

http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/aboutdnr/laws_treaties/emergency_rules/2010_smeltciscobait.pdf

[Steve Foss]

OK folks, here's an update.

And it's GOOD NEWS. Bottom line? The rehydrated treated cisco work very well, possibly as well as the standard frozen ones.

Here are the details from today.

The exact same location as yesterday, with my holes less than 20 feet from yesterday's holes.

I had 11 flags, which was slow for this location (more on that later). Nine of those flags came on cisco, two on live light northern suckers (6 inchers). I landed seven pike, ranging from 25.5 inches to 38.5 inches. Five of those pike were 30 inches or longer. Two were over 36 (on top of the 38.5, the other was 36.5). The 36.5 came on a sucker, as did a 26-incher. The rest on cisco. You'll note none of the fish came in under the 24-36 inch protected slot. I released both the fish over the slot, so came home once again without fresh pike fingers for supper. Well, there ARE worse problems to have.

OK, the method.

I used live suckers on one tip-up and the rehydrated ciscos on another, fishing a flats area in about 10 FOW all day. Both baits were fished just over half way down the water column. Typically I'll fish one bait half way down and another about a foot off the bottom, but I wanted this to be as even a test as possible.

I thought it might be a hot day, because I had nine flags from 9-12:30, but then a series of line squalls pushed through and the bottom dropped out of the day, with only two more flags coming between 12:30 and 4 p.m., when I knocked off for the day. I did lose a quite large walleye just before 4 p.m. at the hole. Head and shoulders were out when the hook popped, and I never got a look at the whole fish. It was over 9, and my guess was about 10. Would have gone back anyway, but it would have been great to get a pic, too. This fish came on a cisco.

Now, let me repeat what I've said often before and at least once in this thread: Dead cisco have over the years outperformed live suckers 4:1 for winter pike. That was essentially the case today, as well, even with the rehydrated cisco.

The fish that popped the flags but were not landed either came unhooked before they got to the hole (three fish) or broke tackle or line (one fish). None dropped the baits. I don't count falsies when I tally flags.

Had I been more interested in numbers/productivity than experimentation, I'd have abandoned the live suckers as soon as I saw how well the cisco were again outperforming the suckers. But as it was, I really wanted that side-by-side comparison with the new treated cisco.

I do still have more than a dozen dead light northern suckers, so my next test will be to compare dead sucker with rehydrated cisco. They cost about the same per dozen, are about the same size, are both excellent for pike, and if the dead suckers do as well as the dead cisco, I'll start using just dead suckers because I don't have to go through the whole stupid and time consuming regimen of rehydrating them.

Oh, a fella happened by when I was playing the 36.5 incher, so I was able to get him to photograph us. Wish he was there for the bigger fish, because it was seriously muscular, with broad shoulders and nice girth all the way down. I think this 36.5 probably goes a bit over 14 lbs. The bigger one was pushing 19, best guess.

[Mike Stark]

that is good news foss. thats a good day of pike fishing too.

[pushbutton]

steve, too lazy to reread...did you change anything on the ciscos today from yesterday? great post by the way!

[Steve Foss]

steve, too lazy to reread...did you change anything on the ciscos today from yesterday?

Tell me you are joking, or I just wasted a LOT of my time.

[pushbutton]

sorry steve, should have added the smilie face seriously though, thank you for taking the time!!! if you do have any extra time......am curious how the mackerel and sardines stack up.

[Spearing Machine]

That's GREAT to here, Steve!! Thanks for being the "test dummy" for the bunch of us that beleive in using dead bait. Boy, I cant wait to get back to Minnesota to pull some big ole pike up on the tip up...14 more days.

[Neighbor_guy]

Not to be the voice of decent...

I kind of hope you find the frozed suckers to work as well as the rehydrated pain in the wazzoo cisco's. Mostly because I am lazy (and I have a bunch already)

Good luck Steve, and thanks for posting. Taking one for the team and doing all the testing and all. No fun in that at all.

[Steve Foss]

Thanks for being the "test dummy" for the bunch of us that beleive in using dead bait

[hanson]

Steve-

If I catch a pike like that on days I'm "experimenting".... I'm tipping a few after the fishing trip. Nice job!

Honestly appreciate this thread because I know you'll stick it out when something isn't working for the sake of the research/product test.

Definitely give it a few more trips over varying weather conditions and you'll have the pattern down for sure.

Very, very interesting.

[Great Outdoors]

Oh yeah, it's reeeeeeaaaaallllllllllllllly tough to put the Ciscos in a pail of water, crack a beer, plop your arse into the recliner and watch TV while they re-hydrate themselves overnight!!!

Boo Hoo

[Steve Foss]

Oh yeah, it's reeeeeeaaaaallllllllllllllly tough to put the Ciscos in a pail of water, crack a beer, plop your arse into the recliner and watch TV while they re-hydrate themselves overnight!!!

Boo Hoo

[Ed Carlson]

My personal 2 favorite "Gator Baits" are Herring, and Cisco. I'm not too big on Smelt, it's a personal preference thing.

My hope is to cure Goldeye, to firm them up for storage. As they do no freeze and store well whole on there own. They tend to get soft once frozen, then thawed.

TIP: Fresh Goldeye, cut in fillets with the skin and scales on, and then cut again into strips 5" to 6" long, is a very good Gator Bait. 4 strips per Goldeye usually. I rig them onto Ready Rig Quick Strike Rigs and Windlass or Hook Setter Tip Up's. Occasionally I rig them on a stout rod like a Jason Mitchell Mackinaw Baitcasting ice rod and work therm like a flash-spoon, also bait rigged with the Ready Rig Quick Strike Rig.

[Acemac]

steve can you post a pic of how your setting up your tip up rigging wise?

Oh and a picture of these ciscos so i have a Idea of size. I used smelt undre my tip up all last winter and never got a bite on minnetonka I was catching them on suckers but could not get a bite on the dead smelt, curious if my tip up is set up wrong.

[MN Mike]

Just so people know, Herring are not effected by the Smelt / Cisco regs, we confirmed this with the MN DNR yesterday and they gave the Herring a green light to be used in it's natural state, untreated.

For us, Herring has been our bait of choice for more than 7 years after trying to find something that held it's flash, the scales were still on and fins were in tact, plus they are really oily and put out lots of smell.

Mike