Deer hunting is right around the corner and that puts people in the field. If you plan to hunt and are a panfish angler, I suggest taking a plastic grocery bag along in a pocket and if you get a chance to take a break in the field, look up some stands of goldenrod and grab some of the intact galls, or nodes that grow in the stems, and open them up to collect the grubs just before your next panfish excursion. Open only what you’ll need. The rest store easily in a cold garage or a lawn shed….you probably don’t want to keep the container in a warm basement unless you enjoy the company of little green flies, lol.
I generally pick about 2 – 5 gallon pails full of them to use until the ice chases me off open water. They’re so small that just one on a plastic rig won’t throw things out of balance but it sure will add to the catchability of the rig.
Typically these small grubs are a sunfish attractor but crappies will smack a plastic that’s carrying one too. Generally no larger than a BB, they are a hot little ticket to add to a small jig like a Gill Pill or Diamond jig, but they also add a lot to a small jig/plastic or a small hair jig like a Flu-Flu.
If you’re a serious panfish angler and haven’t tried these grubs yet, you owe it to yourself to try them. Baitshops won’t handle them but road ditches, woods edges and set-aside acres are full of the plants and picking the galls is as free as the breeze. Just look closely at the galls….they should be a glossy chestnut brown and have no holes in them. Pop’em in your bag and leave thenm in a cold area until yu go fishing, then the night before just slit the husk and pop the gall open where you’ll see the grubs living cell. Pop the grub out carefully with a pencil point and store them in a film canister, maybe in some sawdust from a waxie tub. The grubs won’t keep super long after removing them from the gall but they’ll stay good for three or four days if kept cold. They won’t freeze since they have thier own biological anti-freeze inside them.
Give these little guys a try. Free makes trying a no-brainer if you’re going to be out in their midst in the first place.
