Hot perch bite Wednesday 10/9

[sloch24]

Question any one have a trick to preserving shiners ?

Step 1: Lay out shiners on newspaper (get most of the moisture off of them)
Step 2: Put shiners in a ziploc, and add salt. Shake up the bag and ensure that the salt is covering the minnows. Use a fair amount of salt, more is better. The salt keeps the minnows from freezing hard in the freezer, and it also pulls the moisture from the minnows and they tend to stay on the hook better and not get "mushy" as they can without salt.

The second method is to use wintergreen rubbing alcohol. Same idea, different product. The idea is to lower the freezing point, and pull moisture from the bait. Some people swear by using the salt method (Me), some like the alcohol method. (It doesn't have to be wintergreen, but some people like it for some reason and it's available at the dollar store so I'm told).

When we go fishing, we take a small cooler to keep the frozen shiners in. We just keep the bag on ice, and grab the bait out of the little cooler while we're fishing.

Keep a towel or rag handy to wipe the salt off of your fingers. I can tell you from experience that it CAN ruin some parts of a fishing reel. I have 2 Pfleugers that are all corroded from the salt. Live and learn.

[hammerhead]

cheap Vodka works great