Cheaper than minnows

[bersaguy]

1 minute ago, MacGyver said:

That's probably part of my problem. I need to go for whatever the Stradic equivalent baitcaster is.  I've just not invested in one for freshwater.  

In saltwater I run a Penn 525 Mag that is amazing!  I can't say enough good things about Penn saltwater reels.  

Penn is a great salt water reel but they have never made a fresh water reel that is truly designed for fresh water bass fishing. By any chance are you left handed?

[MacGyver]

2 minutes ago, bersaguy said:

Penn is a great salt water reel but they have never made a fresh water reel that is truly designed for fresh water bass fishing. By any chance are you left handed?

I'm not, but I do prefer to reel left handed.  

[bersaguy]

1 minute ago, MacGyver said:

I'm not, but I do prefer to reel left handed.  

So you cast right handed but reel left handed?

[MacGyver]

5 minutes ago, bersaguy said:

So you cast right handed but reel left handed?

Bizarre, but yes.  

[bersaguy]

4 minutes ago, MacGyver said:

Bizarre, but yes.  

That is not bizarre at all. That is how most south paws fish. My son in law fishes exactly the same way you do and catches a ton of bass when we fish together. He also is right ahnded but prefers to reel left handed. I am going to send you a PM if you would be interested in improving your reel options.

[MacGyver]

Look forward to it. 

[gregintenn]

7 minutes ago, bersaguy said:

That is not bizarre at all. That is how most south paws fish. My son in law fishes exactly the same way you do and catches a ton of bass when we fish together. He also is right ahnded but prefers to reel left handed. I am going to send you a PM if you would be interested in improving your reel options.

I cast with my left hand and reel with my right. I always found it odd to watch people continually swap their rod from hand to hand.

Although I'm left handed, I also play a right handed guitar.

I'm o.k. It's just that the rest of te world is screwed up.

[bersaguy]

5 minutes ago, gregintenn said:

I cast with my left hand and reel with my right. I always found it odd to watch people continually swap their rod from hand to hand.

Although I'm left handed, I also play a right handed guitar.

I'm o.k. It's just that the rest of te world is screwed up.

Well I'm one of those guys that casts right handed and reels right handed so I have to change hands after each cast..............

[gregintenn]

I think that's pretty well standard.

[bersaguy]

2 hours ago, gregintenn said:

I think that's pretty well standard.

Really it's what you get use to doing and once you do it is like automatic and done in such a non thought action you don't notice your doing it. After you have done it for 40+ years it's like well oiled machine................

[jpx2rk]

8 hours ago, JAB said:

 

They are a pain, especially as there are fewer and fewer places to buy them and none of those places are open early enough for me to be on the bank or pier fishing as early as I want to be, meaning I have to buy them the evening before.  That used to not be a problem but now it seems they die off so quickly that by the time morning comes half the ones I bought the evening before are already dead or dying.  I have just never had much luck with artificial lures, in general, with exception of a few, rare occasions.  I wish I did - it would be a lot easier to do spur of the moment fishing with plastics, etc.

It's fairly easy to make a "diy minnow aerator", just google whats in quotation marks and you'll get lots of hits & tips.  I made one when I decided to try spider rigging for crappie, still out in the shed.  I was able to keep minnows for several days, a few would die off daily but I bought like 3-4 dozen when I was experimenting.  I used a fish tank aerator (110v) so that may/may not have had something to do with it.  Keep the water you get when you buy the minnows, and then you need to "prepare"  tap water to rid it of the chlorine which kills minners pretty quick.  

 There are lots of good reviews of the Engle Bait cooler that the spider rigging guys rave about, they are a bit pricey but with the cost of minners, and you are dedicated to spider rigging, then it's $$ well spent.

 

Using plastic for crappie is not hard, you just have to move the plastic bait a bit to give it "life" similar to a real minner if you are using 'em under a float or casting/retrieve the lure.   I troll 99% of the time so I just have to find the right color and speed and depth the crappie are wanting that particular day.  If you guys are after bass, well, no comment on that.  LOL  

[bersaguy]

8 minutes ago, jpx2rk said:

It's fairly easy to make a "diy minnow aerator", just google whats in quotation marks and you'll get lots of hits & tips.  I made one when I decided to try spider rigging for crappie, still out in the shed.  I was able to keep minnows for several days, a few would die off daily but I bought like 3-4 dozen when I was experimenting.  I used a fish tank aerator (110v) so that may/may not have had something to do with it.  Keep the water you get when you buy the minnows, and then you need to "prepare"  tap water to rid it of the chlorine which kills minners pretty quick.  

 There are lots of good reviews of the Engle Bait cooler that the spider rigging guys rave about, they are a bit pricey but with the cost of minners, and you are dedicated to spider rigging, then it's $$ well spent.

 

Using plastic for crappie is not hard, you just have to move the plastic bait a bit to give it "life" similar to a real minner if you are using 'em under a float or casting/retrieve the lure.   I troll 99% of the time so I just have to find the right color and speed and depth the crappie are wanting that particular day.  If you guys are after bass, well, no comment on that.  LOL  

Back before I began usng the tubes I had my minnow keeper very similar to what your talking about. I had a cooler that I coverted into a minnow keeper and when I went to get minnows for the next morning I would get them in a 5 gallon pail and the bait shop would put some extra water in the bucket. I would then buy a bag of crushed Ice which is made with distilled water in most cases. I would come home and put the air tube through the hole I drilled in the top and put the stone on it and dump the water and minnows in it. Then plug up the aquarium pump and add some ice to keep the water cool. Next morning I would have crisp and lively minnows ready to go fishing.....................

[felinesNfreedom]

8 hours ago, bersaguy said:

So you cast right handed but reel left handed?

I'm right handed and throw both spinning and bait casters right handed and crank with the left hand. Never understood why someone would want to set the hook with their non dominant arm. I swapped all my bait casters to left hand crank about 6 years ago. 

[bersaguy]

9 hours ago, XxthejuicexX said:

I'm right handed and throw both spinning and bait casters right handed and crank with the left hand. Never understood why someone would want to set the hook with their non dominant arm. I swapped all my bait casters to left hand crank about 6 years ago. 

Well, I have never had an issue with hook sets because if you think about it when yo are fishing normally you have both hands on the rod right at the reel for hook sets. As far as spinning reels go if I needed you use one I would have to borrow one because I don't own one. They are alright for some folks but I'm not one of them.......

[felinesNfreedom]

15 minutes ago, bersaguy said:

Well, I have never had an issue with hook sets because if you think about it when yo are fishing normally you have both hands on the rod right at the reel for hook sets. As far as spinning reels go if I needed you use one I would have to borrow one because I don't own one. They are alright for some folks but I'm not one of them.......

Man, you've got to have something to throw a shaky head or ned rig on, Spinning rods have a place in my boat. I have both hands on my reel but  I noticed a tremendous increase it catch ratio after I made the switch. When flipping I have no wasted motion of swapping hands to reel either.

[JAB]

15 hours ago, jpx2rk said:

It's fairly easy to make a "diy minnow aerator", just google whats in quotation marks and you'll get lots of hits & tips.  I made one when I decided to try spider rigging for crappie, still out in the shed.  I was able to keep minnows for several days, a few would die off daily but I bought like 3-4 dozen when I was experimenting.  I used a fish tank aerator (110v) so that may/may not have had something to do with it.  Keep the water you get when you buy the minnows, and then you need to "prepare"  tap water to rid it of the chlorine which kills minners pretty quick.  

 There are lots of good reviews of the Engle Bait cooler that the spider rigging guys rave about, they are a bit pricey but with the cost of minners, and you are dedicated to spider rigging, then it's $$ well spent.

 

Using plastic for crappie is not hard, you just have to move the plastic bait a bit to give it "life" similar to a real minner if you are using 'em under a float or casting/retrieve the lure.   I troll 99% of the time so I just have to find the right color and speed and depth the crappie are wanting that particular day.  If you guys are after bass, well, no comment on that.  LOL  

Oh, I am talking about using an aerator.  A 'store-bought' minnow bucket aerator, in fact.  With non-chlorinated well water.  With that setup I used to be able to keep minnows alive for a week, sometimes, by adding a little ice every once in a while, between changing water, to help keep them cool.  I'd buy them one weekend and still be able to fish with the 'leftovers' the next weekend.  The last, couple of times I tried it, though, I still lost a significant number over night.  I think it has something to do with the minnows, themselves - at least where I live.  A local gas station/convenience store where I used to buy mine stopped selling minnows because he said he had started losing more than he was selling.  He had sold minnows for several years without having that problem and then all of a sudden his die off rates really shot up.  Out of curiosity I asked a couple of the actual bait shops in the area and they said they had seen increases in die offs, too.  This started eight or ten years ago, now, and I haven't fooled with minnows much in the last, couple of years but the last time I did there didn't seem to have been much improvement.

Edited May 25, 2017 by JAB

[bersaguy]

15 minutes ago, XxthejuicexX said:

Man, you've got to have something to throw a shaky head or ned rig on, Spinning rods have a place in my boat. I have both hands on my reel but  I noticed a tremendous increase it catch ratio after I made the switch. When flipping I have no wasted motion of swapping hands to reel either.

When weather permits me to go fishing I have at least two shakey heads tied on but with the bait caster reels I use. I can throw a Shakey head about as far as most folks can on a spinning outfit. I'm not trying to brag or anything like that. I cast and fish unweigthed Flukes all the time also.

Now with that said, before my rotator cuffs in my shoulders wore out I flipped with my left hand and didn't have to change hands cause flipping and pitching doesn't require distance as much as accuracy to your target. Now with that said, back in the day when I fished a lot, like 5 + days a week almost every week I learned how to do a lot of things that many anglers never thought about doing. Some worked and some didn't but I was always experimenting...........lol

[Oh Shoot]

What kind of minnows do they distribute these days?

Been a long time since I've fished with them, but bought like a million over all the years I night fished for crappie and stripe. Best fishing was always dark of the moon in late May through early July when the annual shad crop drawn to the lanterns were still too small to use.

"Shiners" were always touchy, hard to keep alive over time, while "Baltimores" (look sorta like baby carp) were very hardy. Whatever those species really are ichthyology-wise. 

edit: oh yeah, there were also "Tuffies", which were long like "Shiners", but rounder in body shape, and generally ran a good bit smaller. They stayed alive pretty well too. Seems like these were sold more in the winter than summer best I remember - used to use them below Watts Bar dam a lot fishing for sauger (and everything else too).

- OS

 

 

Edited May 25, 2017 by Oh Shoot

[R_Bert]

On ‎5‎/‎24‎/‎2017 at 3:11 PM, MacGyver said:

To this day I don't know how it didn't tear a hole in my transom.  

I sure thought I was going to be swimming back.  And the crazy thing was I never saw any indication of the car other than the red paint on the skeg on my lower unit. 

I was going to make a wisecrack about not running your boat in the parking lot... until I realized "oh bleep. He *actually* hit a car".  Once a buddy and I hit a ~18" dia  deadhead at over 60 MPH.  It sheared the lower unit clean off the motor. 

Edited June 20, 2017 by R_Bert

[bersaguy]

5 minutes ago, R_Bert said:

I was going to make a wisecrack about not running your boat in the parking lot... until I realized "oh bleep. He *actually* hit a car".  Once a buddy and I hit a ~18" dia  deadhead at over 60 MPH.  It sheared the lower unit clean off the motor. 

Hitting cars in Percy Priest lake is not uncommon. Use to happen alot more than it does these days but back about 15 years ago it was dangerous to drop your lower unit and start your motor till you had trolled far enough away from the boat ramp that no car could have traveled. People would steal a car and joy ride in it till is was almsot out of gas and they would head for a boat ramp. put a brick on the gas pedal and jerk it into gear. During the summer months it was not to much of an issue but during the Winter months when they would take the water down as much as 20 feet yu could see radio antenna's sticking up out of the water and just call the cops and they would come and tow them out. There was a few times that bodies were found in some of them and missing person cases were solved..................

[MacGyver]

I asked if there was a body in the one I hit. The reply I got was, "well...there wasn't one in there when we pulled it out."

[bersaguy]

14 hours ago, MacGyver said:

I asked if there was a body in the one I hit. The reply I got was, "well...there wasn't one in there when we pulled it out."

A buddy of mine called in about an antenna sticking up at boat ramp at Seven Points about 10 or so years ago and it was pickup truck and when they pulled it out there was a man and a womans body in it. A married couple that had been missing for almost 3 months. They chalked it up to double suicide as they we both listed as terminally ill on medical records and had been married almost 30 years.

[bersaguy]

I will tell you how to have your fishing day wrecked in a hurry. A friend of my was fishing a Super Bass Tournament about 15 years ago on Old Hickory and they had locked through the dam to fish in the river and were flipping boat docks when my buddy set the hook on what he thought felt like mushy type bit. When he began to pull it up he pulled a hand still attached to an arm that was still attached to a body. They called the police and it took almost an hour for police boats to arrive and it took another 3 hours for them to release him to return to fishing but he said he didn't want to do anything but trailer his boat and go home. I think I would have felt the same way...............JMHO

[JAB]

On 6/21/2017 at 1:07 PM, bersaguy said:

I will tell you how to have your fishing day wrecked in a hurry. A friend of my was fishing a Super Bass Tournament about 15 years ago on Old Hickory and they had locked through the dam to fish in the river and were flipping boat docks when my buddy set the hook on what he thought felt like mushy type bit. When he began to pull it up he pulled a hand still attached to an arm that was still attached to a body. They called the police and it took almost an hour for police boats to arrive and it took another 3 hours for them to release him to return to fishing but he said he didn't want to do anything but trailer his boat and go home. I think I would have felt the same way...............JMHO

Did the cops at least let him take it to weigh in before they hauled it away?  Sorry - I and my often dark sense of humor couldn't resist.

[bersaguy]

24 minutes ago, JAB said:

Did the cops at least let him take it to weigh in before they hauled it away?  Sorry - I and my often dark sense of humor couldn't resist.

No but they did hold him long enough that he would have been late for weigh in anyway. He said that had he known it would take them so long to get on the scene he would have just cut his line marked the spot and the boat dock permit number and called it in and got long gone.