Get Yourself a Bait Pond

Ice fishing season is officially over in southern Maine. I’ve got most of the gear put away, save for a few organizational projects. This is my least favorite time of year. Open water fishing opportunities are thin, and there is nothing to shoot until Turkey season opens in early May. I’ve got a few plans to try and keep myself sane for the next month; tying flies, clamming, but most importantly, expanding my arsenal of bait ponds. A good bait pond is an essential attachment on the swiss army knife of a well rounded fisherman. Your local bait shop is trying to sell you 3 inch shiners and call them XL? Tell them to screw and go jig your bait pond. Alewives are running and you want to live line big baits for largemouth? Time to hit the bait pond. You need some baby shiners to troll for spring trout? Bait trap goes right into your bait pond. The biggest challenge with a bait pond is finding it in the first place. It might sound crazy, but there can be stiff competition to find the prime bait holes, and they can get fished out quick (more on that later). I’m more likely to tell you my social security number than the coordinates of my golden shiner honey hole, but I am willing to share some of my hard earned tips on how to get yourself a good bait source, mostly because its March and I have little else to talk about.

Lets start with finding water that is likely to hold good bait. Personally, I look for spots that hold golden shiners, because they can get up to 8 inches long and a healthy golden shiner pond will offer you the gambit of baits from 1 inch trout candy up to big pike baits and everything in between. Happily, there are many bodies of water in Maine and the Northeast that boast a good shot of goldens. Look for smaller ponds that don’t have too many predatory fish in them. The state of Maine has online overviews of most bodies of water, which will give you a good idea of how much predation the shiners are getting. Shallow weedy ponds can be great habitat for shiners, but if there are a billion pickerel in them you’re better off finding something different. Beaver ponds or bogs can be shiner hot spots. Beavers will make nice little ponds on creeks that usually have shiner populations, but are too small for bass and pickerel to live in. Once that creek gets dammed, it can become a shiner paradise. These spots get targeted a lot by the commercial bait trappers, so you might have to find one way back in the woods where guys are unlikely to hike in.

The nice thing about shiners is that they are hearty fish. They can survive in some really brutal water conditions. I’ve found them in farm ponds, tiny creeks, up tidal rivers, and even in public parks. What I usually do is hit google maps and find a bunch of ponds that are 2-20 acres, and then go to each one and survey them for golden treasure. You can use minnow traps, but they get stolen, lost, or forgotten about. A small worm on a size 16 nymph hook under a bobber is a really effective way to scout a shiner pond. In the winter or early spring, try fishing around tree cover or near the bottom as the shiners are generally lethargic. April is my favorite month to find shiners, as they start to feed heavily. A lot of times I’ll find them cruising around right under the surface, sometimes even jumping out of the water feeding on midges. Bring a loaf of bread and throw pieces out periodically, and after a while you might have a few hundred shiners eagerly schooled up near you (this works especially well in ponds where people feed ducks, as the shiners are used to eating bread). One last tip on where to find them. In the past, it was common practice during ice fishing to dump your leftover bait down the hole at the end of the day. I’ve had great luck finding shiners in small ice fishing ponds that people unknowingly stocked with their discarded bait.

So there it is, my comprehensive essay on how to find shiners, double spaced and typed in times new roman. If you follow those steps you will find golden shiners and therefore become a fishing demi-god. A word of caution; with great shiner knowledge comes great responsibility. You’ll find that the more big shiners you show up to the dock with, the more questions you’ll get asked. I’ve lost friends and family to shiner jealousy. Once the spring rolls around, most bait stores stop carrying shiners, so you cant just say you bought them. Guys will know that you’re catching them yourself, and they will want in on the action. I once had a great shiner hole and told a buddy about it. Now the only thing you’ll catch there is the odd bullhead. I haven’t spoken to him since. Golden shiners grow slowly, and they are extremely easy fish to catch. If you aren’t careful, you’ll catch all the spawning class fish and your pond could take years to recover. Keep your mouth shut, be mindful of keeping too many big ones, and you could find yourself in the rare position of having a steady source of primo bait for years to come.

-Grady