this past weekend me and a few buddies went on a long weekend fishing trip – we bought a dz trout and 4 dz gizzies --got to campsite and put them into 30 gallon plastic (trashcan) bait pens we made with a 1/2 drillbit and a couple of pool noodles-- worked great --kept trout and gizzies alive and healthy for 4 days --but everytime we put herring in the pen they would die pretty quick–living fine in the baittank and on the hook -just didnt seem to like the pens–only thing we could figure was lack of a strong current – anybody got any suggestions about keeping herring alive in a pen? planning on goin again next week to a different part of lake where we will be useing only herring so i would really like to figure out what went wrong-- btw - water temp was between 54-58 and clear --water depth the pens were in averaged around 10’
Good luck with that. Herring just do not do well in captivity unless they are in a big tank or bait tank. If you might be interested in a really big pen I have one for sale… 100$
“All fisherman lie. And if they say otherwise, then they’re lying”
Also wanted to add. Are you mixing the bait species? Herring tend to get beat up when mixing them with other fish for long periods of time…and if you are the trout can be beating them up pretty good trying to eat them. You wouldn’t think they would eat them but they will. Came home the other day to this guy floating in the house tank dead after choking on a fairly large gizzard.
“All fisherman lie. And if they say otherwise, then they’re lying”
did put them in with the trout the first nite – realized that wasnt going to work pretty quick–they were just getting beat up by their tails --after that they were sharing with the shad that seemed pretty docile-- but it didnt work either --thought about making another pen just for the herring but finally just gave up on the idea of it and bought fresh every morning–murrymaker–cant pull up pics on my work pc (I T police) but may be interested --have you kept herring in your pen? - i know nothing will live once the water warms up but it would be nice to have in the spring
Ha!! Chip, I am definitely going to be taking notes when you guys talk about bait keeping at home. Contrary to what I’ve been told, my shad has outlived my BB in my tank. When i find one floating its most likely a BB (80% of the time). So I guess I shoud not be putting shad and BB together?
Sportsman Heritage 229 CC
Yamaha 200 HP
Tidewater 170 CC
Yamaha 115 HP
