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Just wondering with bits and baits being closed this year what everyone is planning to do for minnows? I will be fishing Petrie island much more, Shirley's bay only when I have dead minnows. Might even get frozen bait from a fish market if I'm desperate.

We had a discussion on this a couple of months ago, and I think a lot of the guys were going to Carleton Place for bait.

I have been buying minnows now at Manotick Bait-Fishing and hunting. They have really nice suckers for Pike. I have been getting about two dozen at a time and I can keep them alive for weeks in my cold storage with virtually no losses. I bought a chloramine water treatment (Hagen Aqua plus brand) to treat the tap water and I run one 5 gallon pail for water changes and filling my bait bucket and one with the minnows and an aerator. I cover the minor pail with an old mosquito net. I change about a quarter pail of water each day for the minnows.

I could probably do three dozen but I am not sure if I would need to feed them if I have them for more than three weeks.

Rod

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How do you freeze your dead minnows,so that they are not soft and soggy when they thawed out.

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Wally wrote:How do you freeze your dead minnows,so that they are not soft and soggy when they thawed out.

Use coarse salt in the bag. Just enough to keep them from freezing hard. Too much and they will shrink down. I've also used windshield washer antifreeze on live minnows for fishing the Quebec side in the summer. Works pretty well as they never get hard. I'll add salt after taking them out of the freezer for flavour.

Cheers

Thanks ,is there a place in Ottawa you can buy dead frozen shiners ,anybody would know if T&T Superstore on the corner of Riverside/Huntclub would have some.

Not to be a Debbie-Downer, but anti-freeze is extremely poisonous to cats, dogs and other mammals. I imagine the portion that would be diluted in the water from minnows would be minute, but still.. it's something worth thinking about.

Oneeleven wrote:Not to be a Debbie-Downer, but anti-freeze is extremely poisonous to cats, dogs and other mammals. I imagine the portion that would be diluted in the water from minnows would be minute, but still.. it's something worth thinking about.

Pretty sure he meant windshield washer fluid. Which is still poisonous but not nearly as much as straight up anti freeze.

FYI, living in Quebec, most of my minnows are nice big sardines or smelts for like that cost about 4$ at the Super C grocery store near the casino in hull. 2 or 3 pounds of minnows for 4-5$. Hard to beat. I soak mine in windshield washer for a few hours and don't really have any problems with them falling apart afterwards.

qcconnection wrote: [Pretty sure he meant windshield washer fluid. Which is still poisonous but not nearly as much as straight up anti freeze.

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He did say that and I'm sure the washer fluid is more mild, I've just had animals with anti-freeze poisoning come into the clinic and it's one of the most tragic things I've ever seen. As I said - I'm sure it's pretty diluted, and I am sure lots of people do it, but like cigarette butts, I'm in the 'better safe than sorry, keep it out of the water if I can' camp.

There was an older thread where someone said they bought flash frozen (so the don't mush when thawed) minnows at Lapointes in Bells Corners. I assume they are smelts.

Rod

qcconnection wrote:

Oneeleven wrote:Not to be a Debbie-Downer, but anti-freeze is extremely poisonous to cats, dogs and other mammals. I imagine the portion that would be diluted in the water from minnows would be minute, but still.. it's something worth thinking about.

Pretty sure he meant windshield washer fluid.

Oops!. Yes I did mean windshield washer fluid. You just leave the minnows in for a few minutes then take them out and freeze. Certainly not a hazard to anything at all.

Cheers

Bait Casters will be receiving a nice assortment of minnows before noon today as it looks like the ice fishing season has begun! We'll have everything from smalls for panfish to mediums for walleye to large for pike.

Spoke to Tbone1088 on a rather fish-less Shirley's bay Sunday afternoon, about minnows. I have kept them alive with virtually no losses for over three weeks in my little fish farm. In the photo below, the cover is C-tire mosquito head netting and the location is my cold storage... Under 12 degrees so the fish hold up well (many hours) when dropped into the river. Whenever I get down to a dozen or less I make the trip for my new supply and buy two dozen. I even size my two buckets!

The key is the bucket with no aeration. I pre treat it with pet store "nutra-fin Aqua plus" which is cheap for the big bottle and removes the chloramine they use in Ottawa tap water (worse for fish than chlorine so you need more of the stuff). Each day I take a small minnow pail of water out of my minnow buckets and add the same amount back from the fresh pail. I also use the treated water for my fishing minnow pail so my fish all do well after a "trip" ( those that are not hopefully chewed upon). I even give them a dash of goldfish food each day but I do not know if they eat it.

Also when you buy minnows, before you transfer them to the pails let them sit in the same location for a few hours to get to the same temperature. I net transfer them... Don't dump them in with the water from the store.

Happy fish farming.
Rod