Upgraded my minnow tank.

[limeyangler]

Hi all,

My old small chest freezer quit on me year before last and I found a new one for $50 this spring and decided to upgrade my old system, once again Youtube was my hero. This time I have a temp controlled switch to keep the water at a constant temp, and a neat filter system that also acts as an aerator. The submersible 425GPH pump in the tank draws water up into 5 gallon bucket filled with filter medium and gravity discharges back into the tank via a spray bar(aeration). I'm am not a technically gifted person so it took me ages, but varnish and silicone complete, all plumbing in place, tank seams sealed, new top insulation in place....should be able to give it a test run on Sunday....if this works it will be so cool...

 

Edited May 25 by limeyangler

[CrowMan]

Very cool ! Excuse the pun...

It seems to me that folks love their minnows in NW Ontario. Last September we stayed for 10 days at Temple Bay on Eagle Lake. They include 2 dozen minnows per person per day with your accommodation. We definitely used them....if you wanted to, it was easy to bring a couple of dozen Walleye to the boat before lunch. Shore lunch was never a problem. Most of the time, however, we were more interested in chasing larger toothy critters.

One morning, my buddy and I decided to conduct an experiment. He fished with a plain jighead and live minnow, I used the same jighead but with a 3.3" Keitech soft plastic swimbait. I matched him Walleye for Walleye, and in fact the plastic landed more fish. I think because the live minnows were easier for the fish to "steal" and strip off the hook...even though we were using the through the mouth/gill then through the tail method of hooking them on the jig. After a while, we switched it up...just to make sure it wasn't the "operator" that was making the difference...same results.

After that we donated our daily allotment of bait to some fellas from Wisconsin, although in hindsight considering the price of Keitech's (and how easily they get chewed up) it may not have been the most economical move..

Now this was September, and the fish were very active...in colder water when they're more sluggish, I definitely agree that live bait can make a difference.

Edited May 25 by CrowMan

[Rizzo]

oh wow that beats the rubbermaid container with aerator that I keep in my garage all winter! Every 10 days or so I dump all the water and get 8 buckets from the local river...that is my filtration system. If my pool cover hasn't frozen over then I don't have to drive to the creek, I just get a few buckets off the top of the cover! Not a fancy system but does the job