1st week recap - The Trap Line - The Trap Line

Was a reminder of a lot of things. 1: I am getting old 2: trapping is a lot more work then most people realize an 3rd: The chess match with these critters at times and really make a guy spin circles! Had many ups and downs but I no doubt change my mind and have a feeling by next year my line with grow much more! I enjoyed it much more then the bow hunting. Something about walking the creek and reading the sign to try and figure out there movment that I enjoy a lot! I ended up running 35-45 sets a day an that was plenty. Couple things I ran into for negatives were couple issues with DP’s. I had them pre rigged with disposible anchors and had to change it up and added an S hook to run my rebar through thinking it was a quick fix. Wrong! Had 3 pull outs first 2 days on these 2 traps an reason being…no mid chain swivel. Adding the S hook allowd them to crank the chain over on the stake swivel and from there it was a leverage game for them. I switched these traps over Monday to drags and double staked them an added a mid chain an that fixed that issue. Second issue was with drowner sets and ran into again this morning. I am using 4 ft. 1/2″ rebar with 11 gauge wire. I pound the rebar out deep and drive a pogo anchor into river bank and run crunch proofs and slider rigs that worked awesome! Only issue I had was if I did not wire the low enough on the rebar it kept the coon high enough in the water column to hold itself up on the rebar for leverage. Fixed that issue and all went smooth since. Numbers overall though for the week were 35-40 coon not positive yet on the number with 3 bonus mink an 3 rats as well making an appearance. Best success for me was hands down a pocket set. The DP’s are a sweet trap and have a time and place but catch % goes to pocket sets 2:1 if not 3:1 for me. Best bait combo was jack mackeral and sardines mixed together then pushed in the pocket then add a shot of shell fish oil and it was $$$$$$!
I pulled half the sets and plan to run 15-20 locally now and keep running for another month or so weather allowing. Here are some pics from the week that i remembered to take when I remembered to.