with PA closing the beginning of Jan.,you have to make hay hile the sun shines.i live under a mile from NY and trap over there also for that very reason.good luck and you ever get up north-look me up.

This is good info. This technique comes up occasionally, and there are those who state that "gang setting" is overkill and a waste of time for that one mink that passes through. But I do gang set also, and IMO, if you've got the hardware, you might as well use it.

I trap primarily out of a boat. Pull into a spot, secure the boat, jump out and get to business. Why set just one or two traps. If you're there, and it could be you've got the truck parked up on top while you're down at the bank, same concept, why not set more traps. You've already made the decision to stop and set. Set more.

With more sets you're more likely to score that one mink passing through. And possibly that second mink. In addition, there will be a 'coon or two at the bottom of the drowner cable. And a 'rat or two.

A fella can go from traditionally setting a hundred traps to setting out more than 400 quite easily this way.

If I can't drown it, I don't set it. So here in WI I'm running a three to four day check. If I'm trapping full throttle I've got three separate lines to tend.

If you can average six traps per stop, and you make only twenty stops, you've already got 120 traps out. Times three lines you're at 360. Twenty stops isn't much on a boat line, or a good auto line. Bump that up a little. Say you've got 30 good stops in a day. You're averaging just 5 traps per stop. That's 150 traps. Times three lines and you're nearing 500 working traps on a three to four day check.

Typical stop has two to four enclosed trigger traps on sliders, couple of pocket sets, couple of blind sets, both with footholds on sliders. Two sliders end on common terminal anchor thereby speeding up time to set and less equipment in the boat. Then, if opportunity presents itself, you've got bottom edge sets to consider, perhaps crossing log, blind BGs for mink on sliders, pipe sets, and the list goes on.

Repeat this for a three to four week period, knowing where the honey holes are for continued success in areas that draw the critters constantly, and you'll do well. Of course Mother Nature will have her own ideas about how things will go for you in terms of high water, but, some times late fall/early winter can be magical in terms of stable weather conditions.

I am not a big numbers mink trapper,but I know a few.Gang setting is always a plus for a lot of reasons(and a lot of species).Patterning animals in new areas is one.Once you know your ground well after a while you can get by with less traps and harvest the same amount of fur.For mink(and other fur) a good habit to get into is after a catch or two at a location,some of the traps not producing should be moved to new locations(leave the ones connecting and move the other ones to a new location).To keep the catch rate up it is important to pull some unproductive traps,and set some new spots every trip over the line.

That’s right muskrat. In my particular situation, which may be different than most, it works well for me. I’m not talking about setting 14 traps on 3 trails. I’m talking about many trails, dry and wet.

The most mink I’ve caught at one location in a single check was 4. I couldn’t have caught 4 if I didn’t have at least 4 traps. When I’m setting heavily, I’m not just setting for mink. I’m covering my bases for mink, otter, nutria, coon, and the occasional beaver (on my mink lines), so that 14 trap count includes everything from 160s to 330s, 1.5s to maybe a MB750

Exactly!

If I have to pass by a location every day I will probably leave those sets In for the whole season. That Is If I have enough gear to move to other locations.
There may be locations that go dead for a week or more but then start working again. That's true with a good mink stream You will take the resident mink pretty quick but those late season wandering males are still out there. Moving traps and then going back and re setting Is counter productive In my opinion.

With open water rats I'll gang set that whole marsh 4 traps On a hut set every run and toilet. I won't even check a trap till I get the whole marsh set up. And that may take 2 days.
Then It's 2 daily checks then a 2 day check then another 2 day check then I'm pulling the whole marsh and moving on. And during those 2 day checks I'm already setting up new areas. But you need lots of gear to do this.

There were times In The Carolinas where we left beaver and otter traps In for 2 months and never moved them till the season closed. In most cases those traps were producing beaver and otter. I don't think there was a time In those 15 years where we weren't taking home 200+ beaver and 50 otter.

That's whats nice about gang setting right off the bat.You can move a few traps after skimming the cream and leave one or two for the later season stragglers freeing up traps for line extension without leaving any spots unguarded.This way as the season goes on and the fur density drops you have a longer line covering more ground and less traps to maintain at each stop making a longer line more manageable.I also like to lengthen my check times as the weather gets colder which also allows longer and more lines to be run.
This method works good in the north,for landfur especially but also for water fur if you trap a full winter season.I like to set heavy for pond beaver to clean them out,then leave a couple of Millette sets in place to take otter,rats,mink,and beaver later in the season that travel the drainage.
Efficient line management is always something I have taken a keen intrest in.I am always trying to hone the line management.Multispecies efficient line management is an aspect of trapping that challenges one every year.

When I ran long lines I usually had about 150 traps out - maybe 175. I worked until 4:30 then checked traps and got home by midnight most nights. I sold all my coon on the carcass and finished all the rest. My trap line was about 160 miles long. I had to drive about 20 miles on both ends of it.
I had a good system which is what you need or it will cost you a lot and waste time. I moved traps on the weekend and made sure all of the sets were baited Sunday and again Wednesday. I did not carry bait every day but carried lure in a squeeze bottle every night. If I carried bait every day I would get it all over me and the truck... I ran lots of pockets on drowners with some bind sets thrown in where they made sense. Every stop would get at least two sets and some of the best would get a dozen. I usually put 4 pockets below a good pool if the sign was there. All four had drowners and I would usually use only a stake by the bank then run the cables out to deep water and wire them all together. When things worked out sometimes I would have 4 coon or a mink and a rat- you never know, maybe a beaver or coyote too. You have to catch all you can of all species to make any money. The coon pay the gas and the other fur typically pays your wages so you don't want to pass up anything. We have a rule that says we have to check each trap once a day and remove any animal. That's a lot of driving around every day. Here it works well to run traps for two weeks then pull out and go back 3/4 weeks later and do it again in the same sets if the weather isn't too bad. Keep good records and have a notebook full of contacts and plat books of your area. Don't do it on a smart phone cause you'll drop it in a creek and lose it all. I couldn't run traps all season this way. It wears you out. You will need a couple freezers - maybe more- to hold all the fur till you can take care of it. I could never get more than 50 good stops.
Like some of the guys above are saying - always gang set. I had a spot I put in 12 pocket sets and ran them for ten days and got 80 coons - all from just that one spot. Good bait and lure, traps, good habitat, and work your tail off! Oh yeah and the secret to trapping is that there isn't one! Ha!

Boco....Millette sets?

Good stuff there Larry. Those honey holes are something to look forward to, eh?

Great post. I too like to use single anchors for multiple drowners.

Back it up to iTunes and don’t worry. I’ve fried an iPhone and had a brand new one with all information the same afternoon. Everything will be the same, even down to the internet history.

iTunes backups = free insurance.





Good post.

Alright guys tell us how you rig your drowner up for 4 traps? I can see issues with tangling, a caught animal damaging another animal, etc...
Good post and thanks ahead of time.

I haven’t done 4 at a time, but I certainly could.
Adjustable drowners are very important to my style. A set here, a set there, I can make a set where I want to without being restricted to 10 ft or however long.


Adjustable drowners with an adjustable loop on the the deep end; a stop is placed 24” from the bottom to prevent critters from sliding all the way to the anchor.



For the deep ends’ anchor, I generally use a 5 foot 1/2” rebar that has a 3/4” annealed nut hammered a foot from the bottom. Slide the deep end loops of your drowners onto the bottom of the rebar stake, drive in deep water. If you use a snare kill pole as the anchor then boom you just added another set, or just use it as an anchor. I like having options.

Since they’re adjustable, I stretch each one to wherever I want to make my sets. I secure each cable’s top end (T stake, extension cable, earth anchor), and I pull it tight.



I improvise every time I need to. That means piggybacking a drowner cable by anchoring it using the deep end of a drowner rod or kill pole if I want to make more than one lethal set. There are lots of options if ya think about it.


It comes down to I want to have options and make whatever sets the situation calls for, but I don’t want to have to carry a truckload on my back to cover all possibilities. By making multiple sets using a single deep stake, I get more bangs for less bucks.. Simply put, I’m not as sore when I use my head more than my back to solve problems.

Good stuff! I like your logic...good use of time and equipment. I figured you were using stops on the drowning cable just didn't know how. I'm old school and have a pre-set system already rigged up on my footholds most right at six ft. BUT I see this idead has a lot of merit... I need to change.

Honestly, my small traps (mink, coon, etc) are rigged with 1/8” fixed length drowvers, swivel slides on the cable. Fang on the deep end, loop on the top end. This works for me because of where I trap, and very little depth is needed for those.


Beavers on the other hand are different. That’s where i use long, adjustable drowners. Most are 15 feet, but I usually have a 25 footer nearby. My locks have a toggle so I can use either trap or snare, whatever the situation calls for. ALSO, I like being able to remove the trap or snare without having to remove the entire drowner.

I don’t lik carrying something that only has a single purpose. Even my driver sees double duty as a stake puller/pry bar

The nice thing about a single deep end stake Is that If your creek Is not to wide you can trap both sides of the creek. That Is If your drowning cables are long enough.

For stops I just use those 1/4" U shaped cable clamps. You can loosen them with a nut runner and move them up and down the cable when necessary.

This Is where pre season scouting comes Into play. All those drowning systems should be out and in place weeks before you start trapping. Sure cuts down on the work load and speeds things up on opening day.

Yep, I agree Gary, we've got some of the silty, quick sand like, mud in some spots and it is a hassle to trap in. Any more I like to drag in that stuff. Everything else long chain t-bar or drowning cables.

I do mink different than most trappers, I snare them, but I don't start until February. The males are running the banks by then and traveling 24 hours a day. I live in a very people populated state so access to trapping locations are limited. But with those male mink constantly on the move I can set several miles apart and still get a shot at many of them. February and early March mink movement is much different than fall, early winter movement(or lack of it) so my spread out locations work for me. Most years I would have about 20 locations set with an average of 6 to 10 snares, so anywhere from 120 to 200 snares, 24 hour check.

In the dead of winter when the coon Issues kind of go away we just gang set every bridge. Those wandering male mink just about always come to those locations sooner then later.

Some of those streams have 10 or more road crossing In a 50 mile stretch. A deadly long lining situation.
When mink were worth something we would run 4 or 5 50 mile loops. And have 50 to 75 traps on each loop.

If It was wet there were no check laws. So basically we were running 4 or 5 day checks.
Never busted the 200 mink season but was close a few times.
I'm sure glad I don't have to run snares for mink. But If that's what your dealt then you just have to adapt. In most cases It makes you a better trapper.

First let me say that I hate my iPhone. Maybe you can show me how to be happy with it this fall Wood Duck?

I like drowners and have lots of them all different lengths but my favorite is 6'. The most common way I rig four drowners is to make four sets - two on each side of a small creek maybe 10 to 20 feet wide. I dig my pockets and pound in my top stakes to all four sets then I go out in the middle and run wire from the ends of the cables across the creek catty cornered to the corresponding cable so I have a large ''X'' where they cross. I like to keep the ends about 4' apart. I do not use a deep stake typically. If a spot is good for one set typically I put two anyway.

Another way is to pound in your top stake at your first set and attach #11 wire to it. Go across the creek to your other trap and measure how much wire you need to make it to the other set and give yourself some extra wire then cut it. Thread on two traps- one of each side and make sure your drowner locks point the correct way. Slide each trap to opposite ends where you anchored the top stake. Then go out to where you want the trap to stop and twist a small loop in the wire. I make two loops - one for each trap to stop about 4' apart. You can alternately take a short piece of wire and wrap it around the tight wire if you do not want to twist a loop in the main wire then crimp[ it tight and your trap will stop there. If you want the wire deeper in the water you can wire a brick or plate to it easily.

Sometimes I have sandy creeks and I bury something like a rim of a wheel or concrete block with a chain around it. This lasts for years. If I have a deep anchor I never anchor the end of the cable to that . I always run wire from the end of the cable to the deep anchor to keep coon away from the anchor. If you have your cable tight and a coon goes to the end he has nothing to grab a hold of.

If you have your cable ends too close coon will fight and damage each other. The key to no tangles is tight cables and solid anchors.

Sometimes I find a very deep pool that I cannot get into the water to set because it is dangerous. I make a set from the bank if possible and put my stake in with the trap and drowner on it then attach my wire and walk up or down stream until it is safe and the I cross and anchor the other end of the wire. When you do this always have the end of your cable out over the deep water so your catch ends up there. It is easy to untwist your wire and walk to where it is safe to get you catch out.

I always liked dog wood for my top stakes. I cut it now in the spring and then put it away in a shed for the summer. By fall it is rock hard. Split oak gets that way too. You can split a lot of stakes out of a piece of firewood. I like mine about a foot long. I wrap 16 gauge wire a few times around the top of the stake 1/2'' down from the end then I drill a 1/4'' hole through the stake about 2'' from the top and I take a piece of 16 gauge wire about 2' long and bend it in half and put the cut ends of the wire through the stake and then twist it together so it is attached to the stake. When i put stakes out before the season I pound them in until they are below the creek bottom and all I want to see sticking up is the wire loop. Attaching it this way means I won't poke a hole in a glove and it is easy to twist onto the top cable end of the drowner. I have had some seasoned white oak stakes last 5 years. The dog wood lasts a long time too but the oak ones split out of firewood hold better. You'll get a hernia trying to pull some of them up because they swell up after you drive them in if you season them first. Free wood stakes and a good wire reel will help save time and money.

You can make a cable stop out of a piece of wire by crimping it to your cable anywhere along it's length. Then you can stop your catch any where you want to. Use your imagination and try something out then let us know how it works.

Muskrat said '' repeat this'' That is really it in a nutshell. Find your sets that work and get your routine and repeat it over and over till you can do it in your sleep so you can do it in your sleep. Longlineing is not taking a walk thorough the woods on a frosty morning listening for a chain rattling. It is a job and after a couple days it starts to sink in. It's a good job but after the fur runs out you need to move to greener pastures and do it again. This can mean you need to do this every day or once a week. You have to keep on top of your fur and find out what you need to make per day to pay your expenses and then try to catch more than that.

Like the other guys are saying- you need to get it all figured out before the season. Have your drowners and anchors out early if it is legal where you trap.Be organized and healthy and ready.