RE: hitting the ice on monday
Round here it matters how fresh your bait is and I don't like to use live b/c fish tend to swallow. Salties round here don't have much salt..... more borax........ and when you hit the honey hole you have to wait for your bait to thaw. Not me! A few seconds in the water and they plump up....... I take all minnows out of tub and organize according to size, then layer them with pickling salt. It seems to work.....my friends call them RedCat XXX salty minnows. Ialways let my buddies use my minnows...... and our group seems to hammer fish....... ascompared with those around us. If they catch 10 we catch 30, if they don't catch we catch 2-3. Live minnows aren't popular round here especially with me as they don't last. 3-4 tubs will last me the season if I don't have to supply others. Plus we don't have to wait for the minnows to thaw in -40 weather.
I went to the bait shop...... Cabela's ..... known as SIR round here and they had a tonne of tubs of minnows. Most were brown in the belly already and the bluish/silver stripe in the belly was gone.Fish 'round here won't even give thema second glance. It is the difference b/w catching a cpl of fish or catching many..... or catching a few while others aren't