Bait, How do you raise your own?

Red Wigglers/red worms are simple to raise. I use an old 15' chest freezer 1/2 full of a combination of cow manure,preferably mostly dry chips obtained from the pasture, and a bale of peat moss from the lawn & garden store. Blend to gether and moisten with non chlorinated water from a pond or well. Order a 1000 red wigglers off the internet or get some from a friend. Like SHIPAHOY41 said feed them fruit & vegetable matter etc. They REALLY like cantalope and watermelon scraps. The scraps are sweet and the worms love them. The worms breed around 65-75 degs so this is easy to maintain. During the summer keep the lid propped up to allow ventilation and ALWAYS keep the container in the shade. My freezer is outdoors under a shed. In the winter time when it is really cold I put a 25 - 75 watt light bulb in there for warmth. The wattage changes as the temp increases or decreases. Keep the lid cracked about 2" to allow for ventilation even during the winter. I use a stick the size of my thumb(high dollar measuring device). In Oklahoma the coldest winter the temp generally is not below 15 degs. If its 15 degs I have the 75 watt bulb in the freezer and the lid is cracked. They breed some throughout the winter. The red wigglers are known for being excellant composters and excellant bluegill bait. Other bluegill baits are excellant too but the rest do not compost the kitchen waste. Within 1 year of raising these wigglers they will be coming out your ears. You can also take some of the bedding and plant your wifes plants and flowers in it. This will make the wife happy, the plants will do well and it allows you to keep the bedding fresh. BTW trout love them too:D Hope this is informative for some.

Raising minnows is easy too. If you own a farm or have a family friend that does then you are in luck. My family has a 1/4 acre cattle watering pond that stays around 3-4' during the summer. I poisoned it with rotenone to kill all the fish first. There were only perch in the pond and they were only 3-4" long . No real loss although they make great catfish and crappie bait. I fertilized the pond with several bags of fresh grass clippings. This happened to be done in August so it decayed quickly. In October I bought a gallon of rosy reds,about 1200 minnows, for around $65.00 and stocked the pond. Rosy reds are a color phase of the fathead minnow. They breed upside down on a surface. Yes, you read that right...upside down. I places several pallets in the pond stacked on top of each other and held in place with a T post pounded in the bottom. A spawning tower in a sense. I installed 2 towers. I also had some scrap 3" & 4" PVC pipe. I cut 15-20 pieces and each was about 8"-9" long. I threw that in for additional spawning structures. This idea came from the internet. I may add some additional ones this spring. The minnows start to spawn around 65 degs, so say April in Oklahoma. The rosies will spawn in April,May,June, July, August and possibly September. If you can stand to leave the pond alone for 1 year you will NEVER run out of minnows nor will your buddies. A fisheries biologist friend of mine told me that after 1 year the 1 gallon of rosies that was stocked will have developed into at least 5 gallons or 6,000 minnows. By end of year 2 maybe 30,000 adult rosies. I trap the minnows with a black vinyl coated minnow trap and a small handfull of dog or cat food. The vinyl coated trap does not bruise the minnows as bad as uncoated traps may. I toss the trap in the pond and after as little as 2 hours I have harvested 6 - 10 dozen adult minnows.
I hold the trapped minnows in a 300 gallon rubbermaid watering tank with aeration for as long as I need to,several weeks until they are all used up. I feed them goldfish food from Walmart and they readily come up and feed on it.
Finally I treat the tank with a 16 ounce cup of rock salt and some tetracycline (an antibiotic) approx 1/2 bag, available from feed store for $5.00 to kill all fungus and heal them up. This is not necessary if you use the bait within a week or so. I am just particular about having the best live bait I can have. Maybe that is why all my crappie buddies want my rosies.
Fatheads are tough tough minnows much tougher than shiners and can take a wide range of dissolved oxygen and still survive. My experience with rosies is that in clear water and stained/murky water the fish hit them 3:1 faster than regular minnows. That orange color sticks out like a hot burning ember on a black night. Ok,I am tired now. I hope I have helped someone. tight lines.:D

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Originally Posted by cricket george

Raising minnows is easy too. If you own a farm or have a family friend that does then you are in luck. My family has a 1/4 acre cattle watering pond that stays around 3-4' during the summer.

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This is exactly how my dad raised minnows. His uncle had a farm, and three or four of the ponds were stocked with minnows (shiners, in this case.) He had a seemingly limitless supply.

Here is something I learned sort of by accident. In warmer months in the south, pick up a bag of "grounds for your garden" used coffee grounds at most starbucks for free. Find a shady spot in your yard. Add enough water that they are good and moist. That's it. You will have hundreds to thousands of soldier fly larvae growing in the mix in a few weeks. These are much bigger than "normal" maggots, i.e. up to an inch longer or more. Bluegill love them.

For the hardiest worms that can handle 33F to 90F+, just collect the fat, native earthworms that get driven out of the ground during spring rains. I talking about the south where the bigger night crawlers do not do so well. These worms are not as sensitive as red wigglers. You have to have a "cool" period during the summer where you don't feed them.

My red wiggler bed has loads of soldier fly larvae and they are VERY agressive when it comes to feeding on the compost. The sunfish will feed on the larvae,but I have found they are a little hesitant to eat the larvae. The wigglers are a different story. I frankly would prefer not to have the soldier fly larvae in my bed as they consume large quantities of fruit and vegetable matter that the wigglers would normally eat.

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Originally Posted by Tony from Oak Point

Here is something I learned sort of by accident. In warmer months in the south, pick up a bag of "grounds for your garden" used coffee grounds at most starbucks for free. Find a shady spot in your yard. Add enough water that they are good and moist. That's it. You will have hundreds to thousands of soldier fly larvae growing in the mix in a few weeks. These are much bigger than "normal" maggots, i.e. up to an inch longer or more. Bluegill love them.

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Thanks for the tip, Tony. The last time you posted about soldier flies, I spent an hour or so researching them on the web. I have not had the chance to grow my own yet. I did actually used soldier fly larva once before. A friend of mine had some and let me try them. I did not catch much that day, but the area I was fishing wasn't exactly loaded with bluegill. I'd really like to try them out in some of my favorite gill ponds.

As far as soldier fly larva, seems to work best in warmer months, where worms are better in colder climate. at least from my experience. Also, the larva seem to work much better when they are less mature, by the time they pupate or turn dark / thicker shell they are not as good of a bait. Therefore the soldier fly larva you get from the pet store (collected when the larva clime out of the bins to pupate) is not nearly as good.

For a year or so my daughter considered the earthworms her pets and I used the larva almost exclusively instead. I think it is very similar to horsefly larva which naturally grows in the lakes.

I try to keep the larva out of the earthworm bin, not only will they eat ALL of the food but when things heat up in the summer they can turn the bedding to slime and kill the worms very quickly.