Most fish farms sell minnows by the pound. Around here, fat heads go from $7 to $8 a pound.
i would like to start keeping minnows at home because i fish at night. when i leave for the lake their is nowhere to buy minnows. can anyone tell me how to keep minnows at home? how to build a place to keep them alive? and where to buy them by the pound?
EAT, SLEEP, FISH AND LOVE THY WIFE
Most fish farms sell minnows by the pound. Around here, fat heads go from $7 to $8 a pound.
Crazy Angler Pro Staff
Crappie Logic Pro Staff
Hard to do and cost more than just buying them. The only way I have had luck keeping more than a few dozen is I have a in ground plastic lined water garden of 400gal. with a full time water fall and filter. The minnows will live in it about 3 weeks before they start dying. They can't live long feeding them goldfish food, and they have to have oxygen and prefer a current.
If you fish three or more day's a week you might want to look at getting a 500 gal cattle tank (with round corners)and aerator. Clean at least once a week and cull all sick minnows. your looking at $300.00 for new stuff and a little less if you can find used equipment. It's still a lot of work if you only fish once a week or so. Good Luck
If there's any place close that sells minnows by the pound, and has a oxygen tank and plastic bags to put them in, for transport .... you may not have to build or buy a place to keep them. You could buy them the day before, and store them in a refrigerator, until you were ready to go.Originally Posted by fish-wva
One of our local 24/7 stores (PDQ Market) used to sell minnows, and they had a air tank and plastic bags. I used to buy all my minnows from there. I'd fill the plastic bag about 1/2 to 2/3 full of the minnow tank water .... count out or weigh out the minnows, depending on whether I was getting several dozen or several pounds ... put them in the bag (no more than 1/2lb per bag) ... then take the air nozzle and put it down into the bag, and twist the bag around the air nozzle and turn on the tank ... once the bag was inflated to where the "twist" was, I removed the air nozzle and twisted the bag opening even tighter ... then wrapped the twist with heavy rubberbands, doubled the twisted end down over the rubberbands and put another rubberband tightly over that. I would bring them home and put them in the fridge ... take them out the next day/night and put them in the livewell of the boat, for the 1.5hr to 4hr drive to the lake (depending on whether it was a one day trip, or weekend vacation trip out of state). We would lose few, if any, even on the longer drives. (but, we weren't fishing with them in 100deg daytime temps, either )
I even, once, made a trip of 4hrs, in a party of 4 anglers ... with around 5lbs of minnows, bagged up that way ... and placed in coolers, with a little bit of ice around the bags ... and they did fine. Once we got there, we divided the minnows up into several minnow buckets, and slowly acclimated them to the water temp of the lake. Once that was accomplished, all we had to do was grab our bucket ... put it in the boat ... and head out.
.... luck2ya ... cp