Spring float trapping ( 9th edition)

Gerry and I are gassed up but the big river was grumpy today, lot of debris, we’ll see what it looks like tomorrow. Anyone else float trapping???

Look forward to your journey.

That float with the conibear trap looks interesting.

I assume you are targeting rats and beaver.

How long does your season last?

Looking forward to seeing pictures.

Good luck!

Floats work well when you have fluctuating water levels,they have their place you will have some refusals or they will climb from the side and back.Floats will keep you going when you cant keep regular castor mound/bait sets going guessing on rising and falling water depths.

The night before last our river came up 4-5 feet, it’s a big watershed, that should have been our big one,water should start to recede now, it was flowing in the boat launch yesterday, hard to launch boat when it’s that high.

Good luck trapping.I miss spring muskrat trapping.

Had a good start, wind was out of the north, and had a little trouble with idle on boat motor, managed to get 22 doubles set, and one beaver float, I’m beat.

Nice.Good luck.

Great thread! Good luck

I see your not using any bait on those floats.

Setting some Baited and lured stools on one of my ADC jobs tommrow.

Love to use Lennon's muskrat on my floats

In the spring muskrat gland lure for me.

Caught one by the cheek

Ended the day with 10, set 12 more doubles today and two more beaver floats

Beav, I use a piece of parsnip on each side of trap with lure on the outside piece.

Me too but I also use some poplar bud oil. It has a much stronger odor then the rat all call. And I also use a chunk of parsnip or apple as bait.

Nice

Nice catch of fur.

Nice thread, still some snow on Tug Hill and in the ADK’s but you are probably right most of the spring melt is gone.

Had a great check,11 rats today, set 6 more doubles and one more beaver float,40 double rat floats total and four beaver floats, water is still dropping but they are forecasting 3/4-1” of rain .

Nice.Way to go.

Thanks Beav, I'll give that a try!

Had a good check, 5 rats, 1 mink, 1 beaver.

I like the pics!

Good stuff.

Mac

I always love this thread newfox. Thanks for posting again. Mink on a float is always a nice surprise. Nice boat also

Thanks for bringing us along.

Turtledale, that’s Gerry’s boat, it’s a Cadillac.

Way to go.

I set 28 stools and caught one rat the other 39 rats came off of feed beds and toilets. I can't figure It out I've caught 1000s of rats off of stools In ND In the spring but these WI rats won't commit to them.

Another good check, 4 rats, 2 beaver, Gerry checked and I stayed in the shed today.

Newfox,
Did you make your own adjustable muskrat boards?
I make most all of my own boards. I like doing it just like all aspects of trapping.

Never heard of one.

Yes Dale I made the boards, no need for wedges.

Bruce you gotta get out more, lol

Nice check today, 5 rats, kinda cold, earliest I been done this week, time for supper.

Lol.....just realized you was talking about stretchers.Thought you was talking about boards as in floats. brain fart I guess for me.I was trying to picture an adjustable muskrat float.

Whats a stretcher, is that the same as a forming board ? pun as for old terminology used

Interesting hoop design on the front of the float to put on your stake I presume.
So what would happen if you put an old door hinge on the floats front to make them collapsible for storage space in the summer ?

Northof50, I think your talking about the beaver float, I tried staking them, doesn’t work when the water is dropping but may work when it’s on the rise, I store mine outside, they are made from cedar, I think the best feature of the ring is I wire my 330 to the ring and the ring is wired to tree, if for some reason the float fell apart, I would still have my trap.

Nice rat stretchers. Are your floats covered in snow this morning ? LOL

4 rats today, real cold and windy, water is at its lowest level so far. Seems we are catching more large rats than in previous years, usually 1x and larger, is this good for our population? For those of you in the know.
No snow on the boards this morning Squash but maybe tomorrow morning.

That's something I never caught spring muskrat trapping.A coon.

Bruce he sure was happy to get that trap off his foot.
No pics today we didn’t check today, it’s really cold here, like Minnesota cold, worked in the shop.

Lol.....bet he was.

Being in the military, I've trapped all over the country and that is the biggest trapping mystery to me. I've had places the rats climb all over floats and stools and places they completely ignore them, even with bait and lure. No idea why. They don't seem interested here in PA but our season ends pretty early too.

It remains a mystery to me.

We were walking on ice yesterday checking colony traps. Caught 10 rats but It was lots of work chopping them out. Going to pull today.

Coons can mess up a lot of sets. Used to be a welcome cha ching though

Well first time in nine years we got skunked on rats, man is it cold here.


The highlight of the day, Gerry set a few channel sets the other day and one connected.

Nice otter

Ya you're going to get those days-might be time to move some stuff around. Nice otter though. You guys get beautiful otter along with your beavers and rats-nice dark stuff. Bet you aren't as cold as we are LOL. Our rivers etc.. are not quite open yet.

Water just opened up here in rivers and streams.

Thank you for sharing. Each year you and we find out new things. You must have about 30-35 floats if they all are out and your first catches were about 1/3rd so that seems OK to me. I notice how you are drying your rats. I did it that way for several years. The last 20 or so I put my rats on top of my half dozen coon cage traps and with 2-4 fans (low cost window fans) I can blow air on the rats top and bottom. Many times within an hour I have enough dry rats to skin and move the mostly dry ones to the better spots.

Bryce

Thanks for the tip Bryce.
My ole buddy taking a break, worked in the shed today, forecast is for warmer and rain maybe it will get the rats running.

The stick on the left marks where the water was when we started

Today’s catch two rats and one small beaver.

I am not going to abuse your thread with anymore of my pics, but your floats are similar to mine...is it lawful in your state to use the parsnip on a nail as bait like I do ?

I sure miss spring muskrat trapping.Thanks for posting.

Post away les, I love pics and ideas and anything trapping, yes it is legal, if it’s meat bait it has to be covered, I think to avoid birds.

I cant spring trap here, but if I could I would use some rat toilet material like it appears you do. Mine are fall pics from a few years ago.

I have a stack of beaver floats, and they work fine, but I have never showed that in a pic....

newfox1, did you have to move many or all your floats, cause it looks to me you lost about 3-4 foot of water?

Bryce

The bubble trails show where the rat swam under you float at night.
We are still frozen tight up here, 4.5 feet of ice on Lake Winnipeg

Bryce, yeah we’re moving them alright, last two checks we have had a lot of beached boards, high wires, tipped over floats, you gotta love a good struggle, we have lost about 8 feet of water, the water was over the top of the ramp when we started, hope it came up a little last night .

Water came up a little, we even caught one on the way back down river, caught 8 today, they are smelling good now, going to pull tomorrow, unfortunately I have to go back to work.

Nice catch

work ugh
spring fresh air augh

You got to hand it to those little furry rodents. They can survive huge rises and drops in water levels and continue to thrive. Sure some weather issues hurt their numbers greatly but when you think about all the creatures including man that wants to harvest or eat them and all the weather changes and conditions they stick around. I have had 75 plus sets out on 4 miles of river a few times when we got 2-5 inches in a day or two and that really is something to deal with, but never saw an8 foot drop. We have lived about 10 miles from Lake Michigan for about 47 years now and we have seen all time highs and lows over those decades. Just in the last 5 years we have seen levels fall 3 feet. When you think of the lower 4 Great Lakes linked together man that is a whole lot of water!

Bryce

Bryce, our river is the black river and it is a big watershed, we get the winter snow from some of the Adirondacks and some of tug hills famous snowfalls, it can get crazy, I agree the animals that we trap sure are tough.

What a beautiful day to be alive, caught 3 rats today and an otter in a channel set put in yesterday.

Another nice otter and catch on it.

Nice work and enjoyed the thread. I mess with floats every spring. Higher water the better and over head cover seems to help. Under or in the fire willow depending on depth are great places. As the water recedes and banks are unthawing ,fake crawl outs will trump all.

Gerry and I have our floats all picked up along with our beaver sets. We finished with:
52 rats
2 otter
1. mink
5 beaver
Thanks for riding along, hope we can do it again next year.

Nice going.

When does your otter season close? Ours up here in MN has been closed for a couple months already.

Way to go.Congrats and thanks for sharing.

Trapperman222, our otter and beaver season ends April 7th, muskrat and mink close April 15th.

Thanks for taking the time to post pictures of your adventure, I really enjoyed the ride along. Gary

Nothing better than a spring Beaver/'Rat trapline (fall Fox line comes close). Everything is waking up and coming alive and each day has the potential to have better weather than the day before. Its worth the effort. ....... the mike

Thanks for the trip!

Ya great ride along!

Thanks for the ride along newfox.

You got me motivated to build some floats and give it a try on the pond/lake next to my home and the river that runs through my property next spring. Great thread.

Headed to the sale in the morning.

Nice looking furs

Thank you for the picture and the inspiration, hope the fur sale when well.

We look forward to the 10th edition. Thank you for sharing. Good to see the many different venues that trappers have in their areas to trap rats and other species.

Bryce

How was the sale?

Trapperman222, we didn’t sell anything at the sale, took our fur to country buyer, averaged $17 on our beaver, without the castor, $3 on the rats.

Not to bad at all.

Good to see you did ok on the fur prices

newfox1,

Who was the buyer this time ?

walleyed

Always sold my furs to local fur dealers.

This thread is great thanks for all the great content.