I just got one of these from Cabela's free points. I use their credit card for gasoline.

http://www.cabelas.com/catalog/produ...out/basket.jsp

It works great but haven't used it in summer yet. I have the Frabill Minnow Saver 5 gallon bucket with aerator that has worked ok for years. I think it takes a larger quantity of water than most folks use in small buckets, though.

I have a minnow vat that I got years ago from Cabela's, but they quit selling them, and others have asked me where I got it, and I've done internet searches for years and can't find them. I remember it was made by a company in Oregon.......seems like Westco? Something like that. It is oval and originally it used a minnow agitator like this one:

http://www.champlinnetco.com/minnow-...gitator-12v-r/

Though it was 110 v and worked great.......it didn't last but about 2 years. I keep it outside, no other place for it. I now use two separate Wally World stone agitators and they work great. If the air temp is way up there, nothing will keep minnows alive for a week.........nothing I've tried or can afford, short of dumping ice in it every 4 hours. But this setup will keep minnows alive for weeks and weeks if it's not hot..........and will keep them several days if it is, and I work at it.

The vat is not special, other than it's well insulated and painted blue inside (calms the minnows). Adding an aspirin to your minnow bucket helps too, an old trick I learned many years ago from a good man here in Conway that has passed on, that sold minnows and treated me right.

Anything that keeps them cool, dark, and adds oxygen will help. If I had opposable thumbs like most humans, I could probably build a decent one, I've seen homemade minnow vats that are neat!! But anything I build looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption and doesn't work.

I do think that finding minnows is getting to be harder and harder, so keeping them alive is paramount. I'm so old school......I love to 'read' that cork! It's my therapy. It's what I envision when I'm having some medical procedure where I need to think about something else!! I'm not opposed to catching them some other way, but never have been good at it.

Hope this helps.

I'd sure like to dunk a few minnows now that deer season is over.