I’m having a hard time finding any minnow dealers near me that sell either of these types of minnows. I’m wanting to get some for lake trout fishing. If anyone has suggestions on other fish use I would appreciate that. I live in the Bemidji area, would it be best to look around Lake Superior for the bait?.
Fred’s frozen bait 920-373-3352 oconto, wi
They have made it such a hassle to legally sell and use that very few bait shops are willing to jump through the hoops.
Hard to find that stuff, I need to start looking myself.
I don’t think you necessarily need ciscos or smelt. Large shiners or even suckers will still work. Remember, lakers are aggressive feeders and will continually attack even bare jigs if the first miss them. We’ve watched them chase a lure 20 or more feet up the water colunm before hitting it. If you’re worried about a lack of scent, add some Dr Juice to your offering.
I know its not close to Bemidji or Duluth but Stop Light Bait in St cloud sells frozen smelt we use for tip ups every year.
I’m having a hard time finding any minnow dealers near me that sell either of these types of minnows. I’m wanting to get some for lake trout fishing. If anyone has suggestions on other fish use I would appreciate that. I live in the Bemidji area, would it be best to look around Lake Superior for the bait?.
What area are you fishing? Just a heads up you can’t bring even dead bait into Canada. The other thing is the frozen smelt I see at baitshops are usually huge, like 8″. Great if you’re fishing lakes with big fish but too big for the vast majority of MN lakers, anything under 8ish lbs really.
My Suggestion – salt your own with shiners. My local bait shop hooked me up with his own personal stash of leftover spottails last year. We were fishing a numbers lake in the BWCA and the spottails crushed. I’ve see salted fatheads do well too.
Edit: as alluded to above, the dead baits are only used for tip-ups or deadstick presentation. Don’t put meat on anything you’re actively jigging for lakers.
You could try an Asian Super Market
Before the WI DNR changed the rules about transporting fish from one body of water to another, we would crush large pike on the Winnebago system using 9″ cisco on a quick strike rig. If you got flag, you knew it was going to be something substantial. We used “Flagel Rigs” and the hook percentage was very high.
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