Live Bait

[jimdiana]

This is more curiosity than anything. I learned to fish from my father a little over 50 years ago. Back then, the only thing he used for bait was live minnows and worms. Since then, I've also gotten to where I will use a jig or a spinner but I'm still most comfortable using a live minnow under a bobber. I was just wondering how many other people also prefer fishing for crappie with minnows.

[shipahoy41]

I will use what the fish tell me on a given day. I start off using a marabou jig with the F-n-F method. 90% of the time a marabou jig or a tube will work. There are those 10% of the time when a crappie wants some meat and that is when I put on a minnow or tip the jig with a waxworm to give them the taste of meat..

I save my redworms and maggot live bait for Bluegills.

[TreeBass]

I use minnows primarily because I have not mastered the jig...working on that

[PapermouthLegend]

When I am in the boat. I like to tie a minnow trap with a few kernals of corn off the side and begin casting jigs. If I am having a good day with jigs, I continue. If not I use the minnows. Minnows caught at the lake you are fishing are the natural forage and seem to work better than bait shop minnows. Give the minnow trap a try sometime and you can fish with both without the investment of purchasing live bait.

[deathb4disco]

I think it's hard to beat live bait for any fish. Despite that, I prefer jigs for crappie. They're very effective and much less trouble than minnows.

For bluegills, though, I fish live bait about 90% of the time. Maggots are just deadly and are a lot less trouble than a 5 gallon bucket of minnows.

[jimdiana]

I do use a minnow trap. I have a tiny little creek behind my house which feeds into the same creek that was used to make the main lake I fish. I catch a lot of creek chubs and use them for bait.

[gabowman]

I'm a minner man myself. There's a few times I'll throw a jig but not often.

[Fred in Ky]

I would prefer to catch 5 on a jig than 20 on minnows. But sometimes when I go fishing with other people that want to fish nothing but minnows, I'll use them. My favorite method is to cast past my target and count my jig down, then raise my rod tip and let it fall back to me. But I'll also spider rig, vertical jig and cast for them.

[DRPEPPER]

There was a time in my life that I didn't even own a bucket. I caught all of my fish with jigs. Then one day I couldn't catch a fish and saw minner fishermen loading their boats. Now I rent my minners from Dan at Gold Creek. We had a get together this weekend in Arkansas. I think we averaged one fish per boat for the whole day. Half were caught by experienced spider rig fisherman with minners. The other half were caught on jigs. My boat didn't get a single bite with a minner.
DP

[ad1974]

I use both Minnows and jigs,but have caught more on the Minnows.