When targeting any species of fish, you want to replicate what they eat. This can be done one of two ways; the first is using a metal, rubber, plastic, or some other artificial lure to mimic a particular food source. The second way is to either buy or catch the small creatures that the fish are eating. Both have their merits, but unless I am fly fishing, I am partial to the live bait method. Not saying that artificial baits don’t work, because they most certainly do, just sometimes when you’re dealing with a finicky fish, they are often more likely to take the live bait than the artificial.
When deciding to target trout with live bait, you can use almost anything found near the stream that you have decided to fish. The standard live baits used for trout are usually worms, either night crawlers, red worms, or baby crawlers. There is also the meal worm, wax worm, and butter worm. Last is my personal favorite, the red fin minnow. Some anglers use shiners, but for trout, they just don’t preform as well as the red fins.
With all of these baits available to angler, it can sometimes be difficult to decide what to use. While in the beginning it is difficult to decide what to use, once you have gone to the stream and observed what creatures live near and in the stream it is easier. If it is your first time going to the stream, you can never go wrong with worms, be it night crawlers, red worms, or baby crawlers. Trout eat those up, so you can’t really go wrong with them, although the night crawlers are most likely going to be too large, so if you tear them in half you will have more worms and make them appear more appetizing. If you want to have options, take some red fins along as these are in my opinion, the best bait for big trout. If you feel like spending the extra money, butter worms are expensive, but are sometimes able to trigger a strike when nothing else will.
The perks of both the worms and the red fins is that you can get them for free using just minimal effort and keeping them alive and ready to use cost almost nothing. These are primarily the only live baits I use. When collecting worms at night you will most likely find red worms and night crawlers. They are easy to Catch and if you go out for an hour or so after a light rainstorm, you can catch well over 100 worms. I store mine in a three dollar styrofoam cooler full of shredded newspaper in the refrigerator. You can use garden soil and shredded leaves as well, just so long as you keep it moist. As for the meal worms, wax worms, and butter worms, you can just put them in your fridge and they will last a pretty long time with no effort on your behalf.
Red Fin Minnow
Red fins are a little bit more of a challenge, but in my opinion, more fun to catch. There are two way to catch them, one requires a partner and one can be done by Yourself. Using a partner is more effective and more enjoyable as you have someone to talk too while you seine. When using a partner, first find a likely spot in a narrow stream, set up your net downstream of some riffles and cover and have your partner walk up stream about 20 yards. Your partner should dig thier feet in to the mud and move them around, dirtying the water. This keeps the minnows from seeing the net they are about to swim into. Your partner should then start walking down stream towards you kicking rocks, the bank, and any other cover in the stream while shuffling his or her feet. When they reach you, have them bend down and grab the bottom of the two poles attached to the seine and lift up. You should have a net full of minnows ready for fishing. The limit in Pennsylvania is 50 per person so don’t go and take 200 minnows from a stream because that would be illegal and, if you ever want to get minnows from that stream again, unsustainable.
Aerator Bucket
Image From Fleet Farm Fishing Gear
After you catch however many minnows you want, throw them in a bucket and take them fishing. It is important to keep oxygen in the water so an aerator is a good idea or you will end up killing all of your bait. If you have leftovers, they are super easy to store. I store mine in a 20 gallon tote in my garage with two aerators and they last months. Here it is important to keep the water temperature below 70 degrees so, if it is hot out, freeze a milk jug full of water and put it in you tank to keep the minnows comfortable.
While rigging a worm to go fishing is very simple, as you just stick the hook through them, minnows can be slightly more challenging. Rigging a Minnow can be done several ways, but I recommend the threading method. Using this method requires a special needle called a threading needle that has a notch cut out of the eye for you to hook your line on as you pull it through the minnow. I prefer using a double hook as they offer better hook up ratios as compared to a single hook, but they also cause less damage to a fishes mouth than a treble hook.
Overall, when fishing for trout, you would be hard pressed to find a more effective method of catching fish than using live bait.
I like how much description you added to this post, because it really showed me how passionate you are about fishing! I don’t know why I have never really liked the activity, because I always thought it was kind of pointless. However, after reading this post, I realized that there is actually so much more that goes into it than just getting bait and sitting on the boat waiting to catch a fish. Plus, if that is an activity you really enjoy, then picking the right bait in order to catch the best fish must be so fun!
As someone who has only gone fishing once, I found it fascinating to learn more about the details of this activity. It seems like you put in a lot of hard work just to have the best chance of catching a fish, and I think that’s really cool! I never thought about how many steps were involved in just obtaining bait, but your way seems a lot more sustainable and less expensive than just buying it at the store. With contrast to buying fake bait that could be harmful to the environment, you’re using what the fish would naturally eat in order to catch them, which seems like a positive. I am excited to learn more about the sport of fishing as I continue to read your passion blog!