Trapping Minnows(The best minnow trap in the world, the absolute best).

[Jack Heinlen]

When I was a kid, spending time in Michigan, there were a variety of means for trapping minnows.

We were old-timey bait fishers, using worms and minnows on a weighted line with the bait just off the bottom, 99 % of the time. Baited nets and wire traps were two common, if rather unsuccessful, methods of catching minnows, but my family was the only owner of the ultimate minnow trap. It was about the size of a countertop pickle jar, made of blown glass, with a funnel at one end and a screw lid exactly the same size as a large Helman's Mayo jar at the other. Baited with Quaker Oats it rarely failed to trap minnows in large quantities.

They stopped making them sometime in the sixties. When ours was left in the lake one night(a dereliction of duty by a wayward brother ;) ), and a storm came up breaking it, it was like a death in the family.

Well, it is now being made again. I have no commercial interest in the venture, but just wanted all the freshwater fisherfolk out there to know about the best minnow trap in the world. smile.gif

http://www.vmisales.com/glassminnowtrap/

P.S. I see they are made in two sizes, inch and inch and a half(refering to the size of the small end of the funnel). I won't swear to it, but I believe ours was the inch and a half.

[ 05-28-2004, 10:59 AM: Message edited by: Jack Heinlen ]

[Mrleft8]

I found one of those in our old barn when I was about 13 or so.... I always wondered what it was.

[Jack Heinlen]

It was a topic of much speculation why it works so much better than a wire trap based on similar priciples, but boy, it does! I think it has to do with minnow eyesight somehow, the transparency of the glass.

It was common, upon emptying it, to find a small yellow perch or two, cadging an easy meal. And emptying it into the minnow bucket was always a source of thrill--especially to a four year old. It often was teaming with twenty or even thirty minnows, and when lifted, the water running out, they would swarm and swirl and flash their silver bellies.

[Chadd Hamilton]

What great memories. My grandfather used to take my brother and I to the creek to catch minners with that same trap. We used saltine crackers and boy did that thing work! I hope it's still in my brother's basement gathering dust.

Can't wait for my son to get big enough so that we can trap minners too.

Chadd

[ 05-28-2004, 09:49 AM: Message edited by: Chadd Hamilton ]

[Meerkat]

:eek: You :eek: trap :eek: baby :eek: fish!?! :eek:

;) :D

[Jack Heinlen]

So minnow traps became passe. When I was five there were a dozen 'Mullett Lakers' for whom being there meant fishing, in major extent, out of maybe four dozen families. By the time I was fifteen it had dwindled to two or three, mine being one. Wooden boats were replaced with glass at the same time. The twelve-year-olds became much more interested in pot parties than in the size of hook needed to catch walleye. The cousins tore up the minnow pen(They had a wonderful multi-pool artesian spring, and the farthest reach, a smaller pool made of galvanized steel, was the place where minnow were kept, because it was warmest. They couldn't stand the cold of the upper two in summer.).

I don't, exactly, know what happened. There was certainly plenty of money around, but people began to put aluminum siding on Victorian cottages, sold their wooden boats, stopped going out at four in the morning after black bass. They started drinking more, sleeping with other men's wives, cutting down trees, surrounding themselves with kitsch.

I was back two years ago, our cottage long sold. The zebra mussel has muscled out the minnow, and the cottages have become more garish. But the lake is still there. There is a growth of sweetgrass along the shore, and it lends an unmistakable smell to the place. The old man willow, beneath which I held the first sweatlodge in a hundred years, and in whose crotch the minnow trap always rested, is not even a stump, but the sweetness on the air is still there. There are jet ski instead of Sunfish, but the air and the lake are still there.

[ 05-28-2004, 07:23 PM: Message edited by: Jack Heinlen ]

[Donn]

Minnow traps are hardly passe. I use cloverleaf bait, fish, and crab traps from Dakota Aqua Trapping Systems, the most effective trap I've ever used, especially for minnows and fin-fish, less so for crabs. They're 36" in diameter and 18" high, and consist of 3 cylinders with openings between each, inside the curves. Minnows and other finfish tend to follow curving structures, in lemming-like clusters. They swim into the slip along the bulkhead, meet one of the curved walls of the trap, and follow it around and in. Then they can't figure out how to get out. One of my traps will trap over 100# of killies in two hours when all conditions are right, and that's without bait.

Wonderful design, but I'm afraid the fellow has stopped production.

[ 05-28-2004, 07:33 PM: Message edited by: Donn ]

[L.W. Baxter]

You are a better writer than Fred Reed, Jack.

For what it's worth.

--Lee

PS, I always caught my minnows by hand, with a cup or a can. Same with 'hoppers. Getting ready to go fishing was a strenuous business!

[Jack Heinlen]

Wonderful design, but I'm afraid the fellow has stopped production.
Did you e-mail him? I was afraid the demand wouldn't support it. It seemed like marvelous memory that someone else shared and resucitated out of love. Shucks, I was going to buy one just to have, even though I have no place to set it at the moment.

It really is the best.

[Donn]

The last email I had from him was not a happy one. He's having personal problems, and hasn't been back in touch for several months. There's a whole body of bait-men, particularly in the upper midwest, who used his traps, and are bereft that the supply has dried up.

Maybe I'll offer to buy his design, and produce them myself. I was field testing the designs in saltwater, and they work like magic. DNR's in midwest states have used them to fish-out ponds and small lakes.

[Jack Heinlen]

I hope you do Donn. It was/is the only way to catch minnow. It's charmed. Set it early on a still morning and by noon you have bait for a fishing party of four that afternoon.

I suppose finding someone still able to do the glass work would be the tricky part. I hadn't realized until I read his website that they were blown instead of cast.

We had two of them over time. The first had a divot with hole in the top for a piece of line, and none of the metal. Gawd knows how old it was, but at least from the forties. Both broke after years of service, from neglect.

I'm sorry the man who took up the flag has been unwell. He knows a good thing! I hope he'll pass it to someone else who will carry it forward, if he's unable.

[Donn]

Jack, I've mislead you. These are not glass traps, they are coated wire traps. Glass minnow traps are useless compared to these, and particularly useless in saltwater.

You really don't read the posts on these threads, do you?

[L.W. Baxter]

I think I've spotted your problem, Jack.

Reading comprehension!

Edit: Aw shucks, I was too late.

[ 05-28-2004, 08:34 PM: Message edited by: L.W. Baxter ]

[Donn]

Can you imagine a 36" diameter, 18" deep glass minnow trap? :eek: :eek:

[Jack Heinlen]

Ah hell, I'm sorry. redface.gif

I actually do read most/much of what goes by on a thread I'm engaged in, but I was so wound up in the nostalgia of minnow trap that I missed Donn's talk of a different sort of trap.

So this means that guy in Michigan is still making the best freshwater minnow trap in the world. There is a silver lining in every cloud. smile.gif