Taking care of your Bait

[wallter]

Heading up to Mille Lacs Thursday night thru Sunday. Bringing 6 doz. leeches and 6 doz. crawlers. What are my best options for keeping them fresh and lively both in the boat and back at the motel? Thanks.

[Fishing Junky]

What I do when I go to BWCA for my bait is this: I have a bigger cooler, 52qts. and a smaller cooler, holds about 8 cans and ice. In the smaller cooler I put my leeches in with water, and then place the smaller cooler in the larger one and then put ice all around the smaller cooler. I also freeze drinking water bottles and put one in the smaller cooler and the rest in the bigger cooler. There is enough room for worms in the larger cooler also. This works extremely well and will keep your bait cool and fresh for a long time. Hope this gives you and idea anyways, Junky....

[StCroixNewB]

cold and wet... if the leeches get too warm, they'll spawn and die within 24 hours. Keep 'em in a cooler packed with ice (you can put them in a zip-lock with some water, make sure there's air in the bad and float the bags in the cooler filled with more water - make sure to always keep some ice floating in the cooler as well and change the water in the bags every day or so and pull out any dead leeches). The trick is to keep them cool enough without freezing them too much. For the crawlers, I suggest using another cooler filled with crawler bedding - just bury one of those re-usable ice-packs and replace it when it melts (assuming you'll have access to a freezer to recycle the ice packs).

All that being said, I havent' tried to keep leeches or crawlers alive for more than a week...

[nofishfisherman]

get a hotel with a mini bar in the room. Empty out the mini bar either by drinking everything and paying $600 or just set the bottles aside and put your bait in the mini fridge while you are there and just take out what you will use each day. At the end of the trip just put all the bottles back in the mini bar.

[Team Otter]

"Fishing Junky" is right on.

[aafisher]

How do you think I should go about keeping minnows alive on a houseboat

Thanks

[Woodland]

In this heat nothing will keep minnows alive well! Ice water and a small aerator is probably your best bet. But then they will die from shock when you dip them into 80 degree lake water.

[Gus]

Quote:

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How do you think I should go about keeping minnows alive on a houseboat

Thanks

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Frozen smelt or salted minnows is all you can really do in this heat.