Anyone salt their own minnows

I have been thinking about this for awhile now but haven’t actually done it. This year I have had to figure out how to travel as light as possible because I don’t have my truck and won’t for the rest of the season so that means I don’t have my shack to haul all my gear. Obviously a minnow bucket regardless of size is substantial weight and takes up a lot of room. Unfortunately when fishing walleyes, which is a majority of what I do anymore, they want meat; sure there are time in the day when a person can do very well with a rippin rap or jiggin rap but when those aren’t working and you need to slow it down to a tingler spoon or rattle spoon type bait they need to be tipped. Since we only use the head of the minnow who care if they are alive so I was thinking about trying to salt a bunch of them to take out next week in a ziplock baggie. Just wondering if anyone has done it and/or some advice on doing it properly.

Use an old window screen supported at both ends. Spraed a layer of coarse salt on the screen then dump your strained minnows on the salt and when they’re done flopping, spread them out evenly over the salt and cover them with yet another layer of salt. Salt layers should be an inch thick or maybe even two. Leave the minnows covered with the salt for a couple days and then rout them out, spread the salt layer even again and lay the minnows atop of the salt to dry a bit. When they aren’t damp to handle, bag them up and toss in the FREEZER. It helps to bag them in smaller quantities so you can take about what you want from the freezer at a time rather than having a huge bag that will have to go back and re-freeze again.

This is what I use and works well.
http://www.lakemichiganangler.com/tips/general/how_to_make_salted_minnows.htm

I’ve preserved them in coke before and that works great!

ajaikens31 wrote:

I’ve preserved them in coke before and that works great!

Very interesting. Do these minnnows end up being mushy?

gonehunting wrote:

This is what I use and works well.

http://www.lakemichiganangler.com/tips/general/how_to_make_salted_minnows.htm

i read that years ago which is when I started thinking about doing this. Thank you for bringing it back to my attention

I only do this when going up to lake winnipeg, so I only have the frozen and salted shiners from winnipeg to compare them to, but they are much less mushy than the frozen or salted shiners that I have used. All you have to do is put 2-3 dozen minnows or so in a gallon ziploc bag and then just add enough coke to lightly cover the minnows. The minnows will die in seconds, then lay the bag out flat on a piece of cardboard and push the minnows around so none are on top of each other, then freeze them. Super easy, cheap, and convenient!

If your putting the minnows on a jig or jigging spoon salted ones should work about as good as live ones. I went simple. I just dumped out a box of Morton’s salt on some news paper. Then I netted out the minnows (giving a little shake to rid them of excess water) and threw them on top of the salt. Mixed them in with the salt. Next picked out the minnows, but them in a bag with a little fresh salt, done. Stayed for weeks without freezing, any season of year (within reason) don’t leave them in direct sun on an 85 degrees F day.

I have not compared but I was told about this method using Borax. Let die, towel dry leaving a little damp, cover in Borax and freeze. WHEN USING THEM HAVE A CUP OF WATER AND AS YOU USE ONE MINNOw (damn caps lock) then drop the minnow “on deck” in the cup of water to thaw.

I did this with spot tails from the spring…

… do not vacuum seal… not good.