I picked up a 30 acre marsh to trap. I was a ditch trapper for rats before and I am new to marsh trapping. Busted my butt spudding through 4-6" of ice. I caught 10 rats this weekend with 20 sets. Is that a normal catch or am I horrible. Huts, bank dens, runs. I have to drive 30 min. to the marsh that doesn't allow me to leave traps set during the week. I set traps Saturday morning and run them Saturday night, Sunday morn, and run and pull Sunday night. Some of the huts are froze in but there is fresh green cattails pushed up under the ice. Which I'm assuming is a feed bed now due to seeing air pockets under the ice. How do you set your feed beds? How often do rats visit a hut? How many sets do you let a trap go for until you pull it? What size conibears do you use? What do you use to adjust your conibears to keep them just below the ice cheap fix if possible. Northwestern Ohio is my area. Any help is much appreciated I have a very angry landowner due to damage to his dikes.

On those pushups your can do what they call sleeving. Cut a hole next to the pushups the take your foothold and set it in the pushups.

Or simply do some baited trigger sets.

Thank you when you use a baited set do you put carrots on the triggers of the conibears?

Carrots, orange peels, parsnips, peeled potatoes...anything bright to and doesn't need to be natural.