Cut bait questions.

[DTro]

Ok, I talked about doing this last year, and actually plan on doing it this year.

Every year at the hatchery on Vermilion they trap and strip the Walleyes eggs and in the process end up with tons of suckers. They sell them for $5.00 for 100 pounds.

My thought is to head up there (20 min from my parents place) with a food saver. Buy a bunch, cut em up, seal em, and freeze em for whenever I need em.

I've heard many times that fresh is better, but if cut up, sealed and frozen properly, is there a huge difference?

One of my pet peeves, being so close the river, is having to drive an extra half hour (15 each way)just to get bait when I could be fishing instead.

Any thoughts on the food saver plan?

[Ralph Wiggum]

It sounds like a great idea to me. It might not be as great as fresh, but I would think it would work well and would save a lot of time/money. If you don't want all 100 pounds, I'd take a few off your hands.

[barnyard]

Are you freezing them whole or cut up???

Either way, I think I would salt them well, then freeze them.

I think I would also freeze them in "1 trip" packs. Enough fish for a trip, basically. I froze some a while back, but didn't do them in smaller batches. I ended up freezer burning them and throwing them out after the 2nd trip.

Tom B

[Ralph Wiggum]

I have frozen sucker for cut bait, too, but without the foodsaver. I agree that you should do "1-trip" packs. I found that after one freezing and thawing, things worked fun, but if I froze them and thawed them again, it was awful mushy and fell off the hook too easily. I froze it whole, then thawed it and cut it when I used it.

[DTro]

that was my plan, small batches, I would never try to refreeze. In fact I thought I'd keep one or two in the fridge as a "ready to go" pack

[Dennis Steele]

Who's driving?

I have been wanting to make that trip for years myself.

While I do beleive that fresh will out fish frozen, when the cats are "on" it doesn't seem too matter much. Then I just bring home the live ones and keep them in the bait tank for another day.

I stock up on tulibee in the winter, suckers in the spring and whatever I can get my hands on. Never seems to be enough. I am usually out of frozen by the end of spring.

I freeze them up they do get a little soft if frozen whole. When I do take the time to cut them up and freeze them with all the air out of a quart bag before freezing they stay a bit firmer.

[DTro]

I'm up there all the time so it's not a big deal. There are only two minor setbacks. The "run" is usually mid April.

1. One weekend I'll have a 100lb Sturgeon on my to do list and another weekend I plan to be on vacation.

2. I don't remember the size of the average fish. I'm not sure if I want to be hacking up 8-10 lb fish

I'm going to post on the vermilion forum for a little help.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Dennis, how do you stock up on suckers in the spring? DO you catch them hook and line or net/trap them?

[Dennis Steele]

I do a little trout fishing in the spring. I usually end up spending quite a bit of time chasing the suckers if they are running.

Other wise at times they can be caught in the cooler running creeks around my home or can be seined in one of my favorite little creeks.

Basically when the opportunity arises to catch bait, I'll switch over to catching bait!

Got to have bait first!

[Cliff Wagenbach]

Dennis,

If you would like to stock up on more tulibees give me a call sometime in early March and we could probably catch a bunch thru the ice.

Fun to catch but poor eating as far as I am concerned!

Cliff

[Deitz Dittrich]

Dennis- Do I smell a HSO show in early March?... Catching Bait for open water through the ice? I think it sounds fun!

[Steve Foss]

I froze many a goldeye all those years fishing on the Red around GF/EGF. Worked great. Didn't matter if the cats were on or not.

Should be no problem with the suckers near Tower. Average size isn't 8-10 lbs. There are some big ones, but plenty of smaller ones, too. In the waters I fished, goldeye outproduced sucker by a pretty big margin. Wonder if tulibee would be equally as good as goldeye. They're darn close together, looks and grease-wise.

And I can vouch for Cliff's tulibee-catching abilities. We sure nailed them a month or so ago on V, eh Cliff?