What techniques do you guys use to continue catching mink during the winter months, especially with snow and ice? I am especially interested on how to employ foothold traps at this time. Thanks.

you need to find moving water

I use both condi's and footholds in winter. Our snow is 99% of the time powder, so frozen in traps aren't much of a problem. Easiest place is at small culverts that the mink run through under roadways.
I build a funnel point in the culverts enterence with snow (I cut blocks of it with a canoe paddle). You can place a foothole there in the passage and use the paddle (or a snow spoon - an old trappers tool in northern regions)to sprinkle snow over the trap (the paddle or spoon keeps the snow from crusting/freezing).
With the condi's I use a 120 in the winter and set it in the passage, stack snow blocks on top of springs to hold trap in place firmly. I stick just a couple blades of grass in the trap so as to kind of hide the trigger wires.
Other than that look for areas where the mink are going under the ice to travel . Once streams freeze up, the water level drops and leaves space under the ice along the streams & small ponds. Mink will come out and go back in at different places along the shore. You can set those places - OR - chop through the ice and set traps under the ice in the air spaces. You have to know a stream well to know where the choke points are for that. Plug the hole with grass & cover with ample snow to keep things from freezing up to much under the ice.

Kill traps and 3/64 snares...loaded and swiveled!

grey .... how bad are the mink pelts down graded due to snare marks on average ??

i like the ice shelf under another ice layer close to open water, like a bvr [Please excuse my language... I'm an idiot].

What do you guys do when theres three foot of snow and average daytime temperature is around 22. All the culverts are snowed in and most of the smaller bodies of water are gone frozen.

Bottom edge mink sets with a 110 coni.

Use a coni with rotten fish. The set I use is a cross tween a box and a snow mound. Cattails and grass throw all over the mound. Now I only trap the bigger swamps so Most often I'll use a foot hold instead of coni as lots of canines will work the set also. When the setis done it'll look like a rut just made a push up.

Get the heck out of Canada

Rotten fish for mink??? Never heard that before???

will a larger coni help success...150,160?

Ive always heard that you should use fresh meat for mink,never rotten or tainted. You catch any on the rotten fish?

Two Words === "BLIND SETS"




Mainecoydog

270jake,

Do you see tracks? If so follow them after a fresh snowfall & set at the Minks den. Sometimes you have to go right to the source. All above info as well, Bottom edge, blind, snow pockets & moving water areas all need to be use where you can.

Most of my Mink trapping is done this time of year, some times starting my mink trapping after Christmas even.

Keep in mind Mink are hungry all the time.

Look for creeks where they start. Its a good place to find open water.

One year I chipped threw 6" of ice to put in a 100 bottom edge sets. Hard work but it was what I did to keep my Mink line going.

Great luck,
Minnow

i use some of the old pockets that i dug in the early season that i pulled out of for whatever reason, these and blind sets. sometimes its hard to bed traps at the pockets so i use lots of blind sets.

I've had a mink pull a rotting fish head out of a pocket set for coon a time or two. They eat it if the'yre hungry enough. I wouldn't use it all the time tho. Dan

worked for me today. Easily seen trail by steep bank on a lake. He checked a cubby set front and back, jumped through a blind set 150 coni and then I got him in a blind 110. He gave some education to me before giving up the ghost!

How can I mount 110s in a culvert? Also, should I have one guarding each side on both ends (4 traps)?

esf

blind sets are definitly the way to go just remember the old saying about mink... "a mink is a land animal so he gets in the water at the last place possible and gets out at the first place possible." i look hard for these places and it takes a bunch of good winter mink.