Bernie made the fish stick set famous, Just like EJ Dailey made the dirthole famous
Bernie, would you share what the significant improvement was?
The one I was shown had a 4-inch bar welded across 4 inches down from the top. I was using a fist-sized chunk of carp for bait. I found that coons could fairly easily pull that hunk of fish off the top of the stake and some got away with it without getting in the foothold. Another issue with it was that trap chains and sometimes the trap itself would get wedged on that crosspiece. I lost some coons which pulled out once the trap was immobilized on the piece of rebar. My solution was to shorten the crosspiece to minimize tangling, and also to weld a large fence staple to the top which made it more difficult for the critters to pull the bait off the top. Turns out the first inclination of a coon when he found the bait was not to just eat it, but to get it to shore. I suppose that's partly instinct but also they were standing in really cold water. Also I began making them with smaller rod to lighten the weight. I also began to use two traps at each set versus one, which is what I had originally observed. I would place the two traps in various positions depending on the situation, and I found as I learned more about trap positioning, my catch rate went up. Those were the minor adjustments I made.
When I ran into Scott at a trapping convention, he showed me his version, and the lights went off in my head right away. He had welded a large washer a foot down on the rod. This made the rods longer, which was okay because normally you're pushing them into a sandy or muddy bottom so 40-48" of stake worked out fine. The washer eliminated the problem of chain and trap tangling altogether. Brilliant. The extra length of the rod on top made it very difficult for the coons to just lift the bait over the top of the stake. In fact, in most situations, they just couldn't reach up that high. So they had to stand there and work the fish, chew on it or whatever. Another increase in catch rate. Plus, another advantage was the extra length on top made it easier to conceal the bait with a few twists of long grass, which minimized bird interference. I quickly switched over to Scott's method of building the fish stick stake.
