How to Keep Your Live Bait Alive

The key to catching the big one is ensuring your bait is alive.

For anglers, the use of live bait is becoming more popular than ever before. The problem, however, is finding a way to keep that live bait alive for an entire day of fishing or longer. To stay alive, bait need a significant amount of water and oxygen. You'll find that if you simply leave the bait in a bucket of cool water that is not regularly oxygenated, your bait will quickly die.

Things You'll Need

• Small Styrofoam container
• Newspaper
• Garden soil
• Cooler
• 4 bags of ice
• Floating bait bucket
• Bucket aerator

Instructions

1. Line the bottom of the small Styrofoam container with damp newspaper. Add garden soil to the container almost to the top. Place live worms inside the container and wet the soil every few hours. This method only works for live worms.

2. Fill the cooler with four bags of ice. Place newspaper over the ice and set your live shrimp or eel bait on top of the newspaper. This method only works for live shrimp or eel.

3. Purchase a floating bait bucket from your local angler supply store and add any live bait, other than worms, to it. Attach it to the side of your boat with the boat rope, ensuring it is submerged in the water. As you move along in the boat the bucket will fill up with water and the live bait will have a constant supply of fresh water.

4. Purchase a bucket aerator from your local angler supply store. Fill the bucket with cool water and place the live bait -- other than worms -- in the bucket. Close the bucket's lid, insert the aerator tube through the hole on top of the bucket and turn the aerator on. The water will be oxygenated with the aerator.

References

• Bass Pro: Keeping Live Bait Alive
• "Wisconsin Natural Resources" Magazine; Angling for Wigglers, Worms and Hoppers; Robert Manwell; 1997
• Oyster Bay Tackle: How to Keep Your Live Bait Alive
• Paddling; A Bobber Floats Over It; Jerry White