I’m pretty dang good with a cast net, my minnow spots are very rocky though. I’m plannning on building the cloverleaf minnow trap so I can catch the big shiners and chubs that are very abundant in the river I want to trap
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If you get it built would you share your finished product. Thanks

I could never take shiners in a tube trap.
Will try and learn something here.

I have a couple of the clover leaf traps that I made. Works great to catch perch out of a pond. I have a pond that is infested with black perch 2-4” long. I can put in 2 clover traps and have 150 baits in less than 30 mins.

My seines are 20’ and I can operate by myself to catch dough bellies and shiners. I miss a few but when you are by yourself you have to improvise.

The Gee wire traps work, but I find it very difficult to get sufficient quantity of bait unless you have out a bunch of them.

You can make your own with 3 dollar store waste baskets. Make the funnels out of the 3rd basket.
just

will do snowy!

how do i use a siene, i got a 12 foot one

i was planning on doing this to catch smaller minnows

Wickencamp sells those clover leaf traps.

I would start with a 4' by 4' or 4' by 6' seine. There's some regulations on seine sizes and where you can seine in Ohio on public waters, you should check on, that depend on your area.

Mount two sticks, at least 6' long on the sides of your seine. The sticks should be attached so that you can push the bottom corners of the seine tightly against the substrate in the water. The center of a well designed seine should bag in. If your seine doesn't, get it wet, hang it flat by the side sticks and put rocks in it to stretch it.

Your seine should have weights on the bottom and floats on top.

To work the seine, hold the two side sticks far enough back to get a 45 degree angle or less, with the substrate and go from deeper water to the side, keeping the bottom of the seine on the substrate. Keep the top of the seine above water. Stay tight to the side of the body of water when pulling the seine up.

Fish often concentrate under banks and ledges. Work the seine under them as deep as you can go.

In narrow streams, having other people chase the fish towards you works well. Once the seine is full of fish, right before the people get to you, haul the front of the seine up as fast as possible.

In areas with fast water and grade changes, building a weir of rocks or sticks and propping up the seine at the V works great. Go upstream of the seine and rapidly approach it splashing and kicking the rocks. The fish, when panicked, use the current to rapidly go downstream and in fast current get guided by the weir into the seine and held in it by the flow. In weaker current, pull the bottom of the seine up as soon as you get to it to trap the fish.

Keith

Thanks, I will try it

First get yourself a girlfriend to help, then a couple pieces of PVC pipe and you're in business.

I use a lot of those Cloverleaf traps for. Bullheads and green sunfish bait for Bank poles I bought a bunch of them when they were cheaper u got to use the right bait in them u can catch alot in one night with a few set

Guys I spent the last 2 hours working on this and it turned out terrible, will it still catch maybe?

It’s like 18 inches long with the openings about an inch or so

Any other easy minnow trap funnel ideas? I have a big circle body of an unfinished minnow trap and I need to make it function. I cannot seem to make a funnel correctly so is there any other way to get the minnows in the trap??? Too broke to buy more wire for cloverleafs but I will make one when I get more wire

Many useful sized minnows, like crappie sized ones, can get through half inch mesh. I do think you will be able to catch larger minnows, bullheads and sunfish with that trap. Try it.

Keith

alrighty will do. so should i get some sturdy mesh and make a funnel trap?

Use1/4 or 1/2" hardware cloth, 1" is too big unless you want a large bait, , and your slot, inside the funnel shouldn't go all the way to the top and bottom of the body.... better to make a proper funnel with a round hole of about an inch and a half on the inside....get a piece of strong paper about 2' wide and practice making a funnel that fits the trap, when you get it where you want use it as a template to cut your funnel.
cage clamps work better than zippy tie, you get them at farm stores, they use them for building rabbit cages.

Trappers

I have tried the smaller 12’ seines and they work in narrow creeks if you have two people but around here not very successful.

I add extra lead weights to the bottom of my 20’er. I use 5’ closet pole that I drill holes in to insert the tie cord from the seine so it’s not slipping ip and down the pole.

I walk the creek until I spot a school of minnows, typically numbering in several 100’s. I gather the majority of the seine into one hand. I ease up to them and try and guide them towards the shallow water. This takes patience as some will take off but you need to focus on the majority of the school. Once the majority has committed, I throw the seine in front of the minnows up on the bank. I always want to be working upstream with the minnows breaking downstream. The thrown net will form a bag from the current. I walk towards the bank with the other end of the net and drop it once it is on the bank. I then retrieve the pole from the end of the net that I threw. And starry dragging it up on the bank while keeping the bottom of the net engaged with the bottom.

I only yield about 50-75% of the minnows then if I had one of my sons helping but they are not always around.

Crappie killer is right. Seining downstream in current does not work well. The other advantage of working upstream is that the debris kicked up floats away, so you can see what you are doing better.

Flipping small rocks with the seine, while working upstream in heavy current, produces a lot of darters, sculpins, madtoms stonerollers, caddis fly larva and crayfish.

Keith