Thread: minnow problems

Thanks for the info and invite. I seldom get up there and will not have time to fish if I get there. I was just interested in what kind of fishing you had. It sounds just like my lake down here. I fished today from 5 to 7:30 and had about the same catch. It sounds like the bite there is similar. Granger Lake where I fish is one of the only lakes in our area where you can catch crappie like that. All the other lakes around here are highland lakes that are very clear and the crappie fishing is not very good. We caught all of ours in 7 feet of water.

Originally Posted by Tommy Tidwell

Where I fish, the minnows don't have to be alive to catch good fish. In fact, our biggest crappie come on minnows that are all torn up after having caught 2 or 3 crappie. They work well if they are dead but only dead for a short time. If the minnows are starting to turn white, then they don't work as well. This afternoon from 5:00 to 7:30, we used 3 dozen to catch 70 total crappie with 30 of those being big keepers. We use a small minnow bucket dipnet attached to an old broken rod to reach out and retrieve the minnows when a crappie throws it. At Granger Lake you are only wasting minnows if you put a fresh one on every time you catch a crappie. I constantly hear clients comment that they thought that minnows have to be lively to catch crappie. I asked them if the person that they heard that from makes a living catching crappie. I know that it may be true at other lakes but not here.

Thanks for the great advise.l

I agree that you need to back off the amount of ice you add, that temp. change is
the cause. I stumbled upon an aerator earmarked for shrimp & finger mullet/croaker
that I also used for minnows when slab fishing. Bought it at Academy, called "Bayou
Ed's". Built to fit in a 48 qt Igloo cooler. I would buy my minnows and as soon as I got
to the lake and away from the launch to some cleaner water fill the cooler with an
amount of lake water, set the bag in it to aclimate, and after 5-10 min, turn the
minnows loose. An occasional piece or 2 of ice and keeping the cooler lid closed as
much as possible kept em kicking and evidently at near enough lake water temp to
not kill them when used. I imagine any such aerator would work as well. I had a 15'
alum. V hull w/8 hp Mariner-no charging system, and ran the aerator and tr motor
and rarely went to battery #2 even when using the tr. motor frequently . Just an idea.
Jeff