I am trying to sample the minnow population in the small live creek on our farm.

I will also perform sampling with the seine, but I know I miss the fish that scatter at the tiniest disturbance.

What would you recommend as the best bait in a wire-mesh funnel trap to try and collect the most "shy" minnows? Also, how would you rig that bait in the trap for best performance?


Thanks for the help,
FishinRod

Old roy dog food in an old sock ty wrapped so craws can't tear it up. Tennis ball size

Thanks Kenny.

Hopefully I can collect some interesting species to post in an ID thread.

The creek ran pretty strong all winter despite our lack of rain. I am hoping all of the locally available species have run up this spring from the main river connection.

I suspect I won't be able to get a sample of everything until summer water levels when the creek becomes a series of quiet pools that are connected by very shallow flows of running water.

P.S. I don't mind catching a few craws too. I also need to sample and identify them!

For seining a stream try holding the seine across the stream while someone goes up stream on the bank, enters the stream and makes disturbance as they move toward you down stream with the seine. Larger seines work best for this method. Funnel traps placed down stream as the noise maker moves down stream could also work for catching lots of minnows. I have considered building a minnow trap with wings (wings could be seine material) that would span the entire stream width in a narrows area as minnows are chased or herded downstream into the trap.

I bait my minnow traps with stale white bread and fish food.

I use fish pellets tied up in an old sock.

Thanks Bill.

I think you are correct that some creative "hunting" might be the most effective means of sampling fish.

My streambed is mostly soft sand. When the stream is running at very low flows, I think I could easily build some wings and then construct only one outlet with a few shovel scoops. Two or three passes through the pool with the seine should herd a high percentage of the fish into the outlet.

Follow up question:

How long can fish be held in a cage without supplemental feeding?

I am thinking of the situation in a fish trap in a clear running stream, or of the situation of a fish cage in a pond with good water conditions. I have no idea how long fish that are predators can comfortably go without a decent meal.

Depends on the "fish" Rod.. Most fish in a cage/trap in a natural environment can go quite some time. It also depends on temp. They may survive without food longer than they can sustain low DO at higher temps.

As someone who has trapped minnows in a creek I will give this one quick piece of advice. Know the weather. Rising water will steal the trap. I cannot recall if you are on the farm all the time FishingRod but I can tell you that if it is infrequent but a few hours .... that you could set when you arrive and collect as you plan to leave that you will capture minnows if it has been placed at a good trapping location.

Our Iowa farm creek I have been using the same method for 60 years. I take a slice of bread wet it with some water just enough to make a dough ball and mix in some dry oatmeal while doing this and put some in the trap. Seemed to always work.

jpsdad,

Thanks for your additional input about losing traps. We don't live on the farm, so that was the reason for my additional question. I was considering that I would sometimes put the trap in the creek on a Saturday, and then pull it on the following Saturday.

Our tiny little creek has a very large watershed, so even small pop-up thunderstorms can cause a significant creek rise that will certainly attempt to steal my traps and wipe out any larger fish capture structures that I might build. I will have to consider anything left in the creek long-term as subject to loss.

The reason I asked about capturing "shy" minnows, is that my previous efforts have quickly captured a few GSF, even with a relatively small funnel opening.

I can envision initially capturing 10 minnows and 2 small GSF. By the time I examine the trap, I will only observe 0 minnows and 2 less-small GSF.

I think I am going to have to utilize a combination of "passive" and "active" collection methods to get a comprehensive sampling of all of the species.

Thanks for all of the good advice.

The trap opening size will determine how many fish the trap retains (or catches). I have found that my crawdad trap and clover leaf trap tend to catch 3 to 5 inch craws and 3 to 5 inch panfish, but rarely any minnow, smaller panfish, or smaller craws...all of which are in the pond. The cloverleaf trap has slit openings that are about 1 inch wide by 12 inches tall and the craw trap has a 2 inch diameter opening. I have always suspected that the smaller volunteers easily find there way back out and/or are too shy to enter with the larger creatures already in the trap.

I agree with using a sock and tie with your choice of dog food or fish pellets. I used dog food in my pond traps at first, but it seemed to add a bit of an oily slick to the water's surface on calm days and I switched to fish pellets. I'd use dog food in a creek just to save my fish food for the pond fish, however.

Epic fail, I couldn't catch a single minnow in a pool full of minnows!

I placed a trap baited with dog food and bread in my deepest pool for five hours. I only managed to catch 2 GSF.

I placed the trap near the edge of the strong flow because that is where I observed the largest school of minnows.

I now think the current was too strong there, and I only saw the minnows there because that is where they initially sheltered after I startled them walking up to the edge of the bank.

Thanks to all for the good advice, I think the problem was "operator error".

Fortunately, I will have many more chances in the future to try sampling the creek. The good news is that I believe I observed three different types of minnows. (Unless some were fish fry. My eyes are certainly not good enough to distinguish between fry and minnows without a lot more calibration.)

Put the trap in the slowest flowing water you can, and have the opening of the trap facing downstream.

I put the trap in an eddy adjacent to the highest flow. The trap was a couple of inches wider than the eddy, so I think I also disturbed the "quietness" of the eddy.

Despite me putting the trap in the worst place, there were still two GSF that managed to brave the flow to get at the bait!