Bait Purchases

Hey Guys/Gals:

Looking for suggestions regarding bait purchases for a week of walleye/SMB fishing. 3 guys who fish pretty hard and have access to pretty good bait sources here where we live, but am curious as to any shortages we might encounter at Kab or the area and if 6 dozen crawlers and a pound of leeches would be a reasonable start.

Mark

Heading further north Mark? Good luck and have good trip.

I haven’t been up there in a few weeks so maybe things have improved, but leeches we’re pretty scarce earlier this summer and the size we’re small. I’d suggest bringing bait up with you if possible. Gateway General Store is the best spot for bait on kab. You could call them and see what they have available.

If you can find Leeches by the pound right now – you have truly a great bait source. Last weekend we stopped at 5 bait stores in the ottertail area looking for leeches. All we got were a lot of laugh’s from the people at bait stores. They said there has been no leech’s for over a month.

Since your coming from northern WI you could check with the Bait Box in Superior for leeches. My F-I-L got a nice half pound of large from them on there way from Hurley up to Kab/Namakan on 7/24.
You could also call Fishermans Corner in Pike Lake, but only if they have the Large mix, dont get the Medium mix, it was not good (they were out of Large on 7/23 when I was there).
There is also Northwoods bait in Cook.
All of these places I would call ahead of time, and lock in for your leeches or just bring them from home.

Thanks for all the info on the leeches!!! And I am not surprised as I have been hearing from over here that leeches have been hard to come by and we get ours from MN, so… What about crawlers, any problems with these???

Mark

Hope you have a GREAT trip Mark. Didn’t get to see you at Fibbers this year.

MX1825 wrote:

Hope you have a GREAT trip Mark. Didn’t get to see you at Fibbers this year.

Having the new gig at the Post Office inhibited my ability to work Fibber’s this year. Being a sub in days where there is not enough help, I put in the working game 6 days a week and I couldn’t commit to being on time nor working all the hours for two jobs when I didn’t need to. So Fibber’s lost out, even though I did help two weekends ago so Ted could go to a wedding. Other than two Tuesdays ago, this upcoming Kab trip will be my first days off since our other sub had her baby and ensuing mnaternity leave. I don’t care if we catch a fish.

And I have a friendship started with the Fish Donkey app developer from our WIFA high school student ice tourneys and he will be at Kab as well this week, on the same peninsula. I really don’t care if I catch a fish!!!

But I’m guessing that crawlers are available in most live bait situations and leeches are done for the year.

Mark

Crawlers were not an issue a few weeks ago. You should be able to get them about anywhere along the way too.

Never hurts to throw in a bag of Gulp leeches. No they aren’t as good as the real thing but they do work well at times. On Canadian trips in the past, I always bought a bag if we ran out of the real stuff. About 1 out of 3 trips we did. Beats going home a day early anyway. If the fish are biting that hard that we run out of live bait, they will hit the Gulp ~

FryDog62 wrote:

Never hurts to throw in a bag of Gulp leeches. No they aren’t as good as the real thing but they do work well at times. On Canadian trips in the past, I always bought a bag if we ran out of the real stuff. About 1 out of 3 trips we did. Beats going home a day early anyway. If the fish are biting that hard that we run out of live bait, they will hit the Gulp ~

I agree and was certainly thinking about doing that if we didn’t find any… It seems as though we got lucky and scored some that may have been intended for another… and I have no idea how much money was involved.

Mark

There is only one bait supplier to all the resorts up there. If your resort doesn’t have leeches there probably aren’t any available.