Keep Minnows Alive in your Bucket

On any average day, it takes about an hour to kill off a bucket full of minnows, and in the summer, they will die off even quicker. There are 3 important reasons why your minnows always seem to die this quickly :

• Rapid changes in temperature
• Lack of oxygen, and
• Dirty water

To avoid these problems, there are a few things you should consider:

1. Minimize the period of time your minnows will spend in your car. Cars tend to get hot in the summer, and fish die really quickly when temperatures vary too quickly. Also minnows don't handle the stress of a constantly vibrating bucket too well. In other words, try to get your livebait as close as possible from your destination.

2. Try to get a minnow bucket with a foam insulator to minimize heat transfer through the walls. This is also key in the winter to prevent getting too cold and freezing.

Frabill's Kool Keeper is an insulated minnow bucket

3. If you can't find such an insulated bucket, then put your "normal" minnow bucket in an ice chest with one or two small ice paks to keep it cool.

4. To provide oxygen, you can buy oxygen pills, or you can buy an air pump designed to hang off the side of the bucket. Obviously, the pump is the best option here, pills don't require batteries, but the pump will last 60 hours on 2 "D" cells.

Rapala's Bucket Aerator works wonders for me

5. Finally, some people will use a small plastic ice chest combined with an aerator and let the minnows swim directly in the ice chest.

If you follow these simple guidelines, you will enjoy much livelier minnows, and very few will die before the day ends, which makes for more productive time on the water.