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Fishing is an art that requires skills, patience, and the right techniques. An angler must master these three things because they significantly help to make the fishing experience fun and easy. If you are new, one of the many things you would learn apart from getting good gear is preparing bait and using it wisely.
Baits are what attract fish, making them easy to catch. However, there are different types of baits – it is only for you to find out which type you would use for a particular fish species. Some of the popular baits used include minnows, insects, birds, plants, and so on.
Minnows are the commonest baits, even though they are a bit difficult to handle. Funnily, some anglers consider every baitfish as minnows, even when they aren’t. Nevertheless, minnows are great fish species choices like Brown Trout, Northern Pike, Crappie, Bass, Bluegill, etc.
How to Fish For Minnows?
Minnow fishing can be quite difficult because of its small size and delicate body. It would help if you were careful catching this fish, and even after that, transporting needs to be done with the utmost care (they are best used alive).
Below are important tips on how to catch minnows.
Find Clean Water Area with Cool Temperature
Minnows are plentiful in water bodies with cool temperatures. They need this temperature for survival since it provides a good amount of oxygen. Moreover, they detest sunlight.
Also, they love clean water.
Prepare an Alternative Breathing Environment
When you catch minnows in clean water areas, you need to prepare an alternative environment for them to survive. It usually involves getting water into a bucket and de-chlorinating. After removing chlorine in the water, you should then use portable aerators to increase the amount of oxygen.
If this breathing environment is well-prepared, you can hold minnows in it for a while until you are ready to fish properly.
What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Minnows as Baits?
Live and Dead Minnows are perfect lures, but the various advantages and disadvantages are important to know why and why not they should be used.
First, live minnows are pretty much easier to find by other species of fish. Regardless of the depth, fish in still water areas are attracted to minnows, making it easy for anglers to catch them.
Another advantage of using minnows as baits is that they aren’t much of weight when hooked to catch other fish species. They are lightweight baits.
Unfortunately, the disadvantages of using minnows are:
They risk dying quickly in a new water environment. Minnows only survive in Freshwater.
Getting minnows from one fishing location to another can be tedious.
How Do You Hook a Minnow: A Step-By-Step Guide?
Certainly, minnows are meant to be hooked before using them to catch other fish in water. Now, that means you need the right fishing gear, consisting of a hook, to achieve this aim.
If you already have your hook, you need to learn the best techniques to hook minnows. There are 3 easy methods of hooking a minnow, and they go thus:
Dorsal Hook
One hard way to hook a minnow is through the back. It needs to be done carefully because the slightest mistake can harm the fish or kill it.
The Dorsal Hook, slightly in front of the dorsal fin, keeps the fish for as long as possible, ensuring that it is alive to swim naturally and attract other fish in the water.
If you will try out this method, ensure you don’t pierce the spine while attaching the hook to the back.
It is the perfect technique for intermediate anglers.
Trick Hook
A litter harder to do than the Dorsal Hook is the Trick Hook using a minnow as a lure. It isn’t always advisable because it only keeps the fish alive for a very short time.
A Trick Hook, on the advantage, keeps the minnow well-attached so that it doesn’t fall off over subsequent casting. However, it would be best if you were careful when trying out this technique.
It primarily involves threading the hook line through the minnow’s mouth and out near the stomach. If you are successful, fishing in fast-moving or rough waters may not be so difficult.
Through-The-Lip Hook
The simplest and the easiest way to hook a minnow is through the lip. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be careful when trying out this method. If you make the wrong move, you might harm or kill the fish.
There are only two scenarios where you have to hook a minnow through its lips – casting and retrieving. When you cast a minnow into the water, it swims naturally and attracts other fish species. On the other hand, recovering isn’t difficult too.
Other methods of hooking a minnow include using a jig head and going through the lips, threading from the lower to the upper lip.
Read here on how to fish for trout.
How Do You Choose the Right Hook for Minnows?
Irrespective of the method you decide to try out, hooking your minnows carefully is always a goal. One of the many things responsible for ensuring that it is possible is choosing the right hook.
If you choose the ideal hook of the perfect size, attaching at the back or stomach or through the lip of a minnow won’t be so difficult. This hook varies depending on the size of the fish.
Minnows between 10 to 12.5cm can use hooks around 2; those less than 7.5 can make use of hooks below 6.
Conclusion
Fishing is not that one straightforward process you always think it is; it often requires a lot of planning and post-fishing. From minnow fishing to actual fishing of your preferred type or species of fish, you seem to have a lot of work to do. Nevertheless, learning the easy ways on how to hook a minnow will help make fishing a lot better for you.
