Saturday starts PA's one week otter season. I have found a toilet in a very rocky area and not sure where they are accessing it as there are several places it could be and we are only allowed to use (5) traps total only (2) can be bodygrips. The actual toilet is 25-30' from the water. Not sure if I should set the toilet and try to cable the trap back to the river for a drowning rig or use a cable stake to keep them at the set. I have Bridger #3 Closed Jaw 4-Coiled or MB550 Closed Jaw 4-Coiled to use. This leads me to another question....Why do some guys want to use smaller traps on dryland anchored sets and larger traps in drowning sets...Seems backwards to me. Any thought???

I suppose you could run a slider if you really want to. If thats too impractical,lot of otter have been caught staked Id look hard for trails leading to the toilet if you can.


Legal limits most of the time and the rest of the time it's because if you're trapping otter, youll wear out the beaver first so if a beaver messes with a set, id rather catch him than have a snapped trap.

BRONZEBACK dont know what kind of water you're trapping but if you're on a small tributary/creek look for a pinch point or main channel & put in a 330. Bottom edge sets work great on otter just like mink

It’s a larger river with no pinch points so it makes it difficult. It’s also hard to wade with varying depths. I’ll have to look around there for bottom edge opportunities. I love bottom edge setting for mink. Amazing how well it works.

In a situation like yours with no visible spots to put a trap i'd probably put in a visible fake trail near that toilet

Yepper. I made one the best I could through the rocks. Couple blind sets. And some toilet sets. We’ll see what happens. Set a couple 330’s where they “may” be accessing the land and used dive sticks.

There was a guy at the first spot I wanted to trap (on private land with no permission). 😤