thinking about a home tank....and don't know what to think..

[lund1]

With Lund2 down for the Fall season we're spending a lot of time thinking/talking about how we can spend more money on Striper fishing....that's led us to the clear conclusion we need a home tank ( this is a MUCH better idea then convincing ourselves we need to upgrade the boat)

Neither of us are very handy....we both read Bent Rod's extremely thorough description of his set up....complete with pump sizes, filter methods, Danco preferences, UV lighting suggestions....looked carefully at the album of explanatory pictures that show how it all works....and came away with absolute certainty that we don't have a clue. Holy cow!!

here's a few questions/requests that may help us struggle through our incompetence;

1) what do you guys think about the idea of modifying our electric jet ski lift ( that means we sell the stupid jet ski which makes me happy), creating a platform. We place the largest round tank we can on the platform, drill as many small holes in bottom and sides as possible without losing structural integrity....lower it into the water and create a submerged tank on the lift ( with a lid)....raise it up when we want it...lower it when we don't. Is that just another version of the Hawk built wire bait cage I tried before? That resulted in lots of red noses and a huge green mess....it didn't really work. Would this be any better? Sure would be nice if it did but dont want to spend the $ moving the lift to deeper water only to discover it's a bust.

2) given a no to the above.......is there a guy in the area that actually makes home tanks?...complete with all the complicated filtering that Bent Rod made to sound so elementary and simple...even though it's not? I'm looking to out source this project, having learned what I'm good at...and what I'm not. Without any embaressment I will admit this is my go to solution ( I'm the same guy that needed Gator to come set a beaver trap to catch the wood chuck under my house...see? no shame in ineptitude)

3) given a no to both above....what are the things our group has learned about the success/failure of home tanks? I basically know it needs to be round....hence my outsource idea.

I've got a nice area of room on the dock for a tank that won't pee off the misses ( too much) and Lund2's sworn commitment he will maintain in...I just need to know the right approach....something simple...not too big....use during the fall/spring seasons and drain it in the summer.

Open to any all comments and suggestions....something like ..." I'll come build one for $ " would be great!

Thanks all....tight lines.

[R22]

I have a home tank. Success is not as easy as many indicate. I learned a lot about keeping gizzards alive by making lots of mistakes, keeping lots of notes and testing the water when it's good and when it's bad. All in all, it's worth it.

You are welcome to contact me and take a look at my unit.

Pete Smith
434-258-8600

[Yam]

Mr. Lund, I have spent hours upon hours playing with Bentrod's tank. I enjoyed every minute of it. However, if fishing for striper is your goal, unless you are around to babysit your tank very regularly, I think you fill find many, many hours of wasted effort not fishing. You will most likely spend great amounts of energy finding bait coupled with many weeks of construction and fine tuning your tank. You will then leave them alone and when you come back to use them, most of them will be dead because one sick bastard killed the rest of them while you were away. The only way to combat this issue is to get rid of the sick immediately. If you are not around to do this by hand, you are screwed.

Thus, given your situation, I would stop thinking about making a bait tank and continue to use the bait tank that you already use. That is... the lake! Mother nature takes care of this perfectly optimized tank while you are gone. There are no start up costs nor will Mrs. Lund want to divorce you for cluttering up her peaceful vacation home with bait tank paraphernalia.

I look forward to seeing your new boat.

[jmr04]

I built one this fall. So far I’ve been happy with it. Once you come up with a game plan building it wasn’t really all that hard, however, I did get some help with guys I work with. So far I haven’t left bait in it unattended but think I’m gonna give it a try this weekend.

What I normally do it’s fill it Thursday evening and fish out of it over the weekend then dump it before I leave. I really like starting out with a clean boat tank before each trip.

I’ve learned bait care is critical when keeping bait over a period of time. No more dumping the net on the boat deck. Now it goes straight into a muck bucket then to a purge tank then to boat tank for a few hours before in the dock tank. Once they cure out they get tough and shiny and do well.

One thing you may want to consider is getting a custom built 200 gallon shad shack tank and sitting that on your dock. I’ve heard good things about them and the way they are constructed seems like it would hold bait well over a period of time.

I talked to Chris about coming over to check my tank out when he’s up and about, if your going to be around this weekend your more than welcome to come by.

[bushwacker]

I shared some info with Lund2 over tourney weekend of the set-up me and my buddy are using. It is a very simple system, but I don't know how well it will work over a period of time unattended, and we may not leave bait in it unattended. Our main goal was to have a tank to store excess bait on Long weekends and over tourney weekends. We have only used it once in the spring and for the first time this fall over the tourney weekend. It so far has worked good like this. It's really nice knowing you have an uncrowded bait tank on the boat and then a storage of fresh bait to dip out of for the evening or next days. It may take time to find the bait but once you do your good for several days and can focus more on fishing and less on hunting bait.

[mwardncsu]

The fundamental key to success unfortunately is being near the tank for the 1st 3 days after filling it with a load of bait - remove any that go belly up, and keeping filters clean. Once you get them past those 1st few days they are a lot easier and you'll likely kill them from starvation after many weeks. If you can schedule things to come up and make a bait run and fill the tank on a Thur evening or Fri AM, keep the filters clean several times throughout the weekend in between fishing, and hang till Monday AM or so, then there is a much better change - still always have the possibility of a few going belly up and killing things while you're gone, but those 1st 3 days are critical.

I don't know if the filtering to have clear water is so critical to their health, as much as it is for our satisfaction to watch them swim around but seriously, one key need of clearer water is that you can find the ones that died and are laying on the bottom so you can get them out before they make the rest of the tank go belly up.

Also, VERY MINIMAL HANDLING is key - this from from how you retrieve the cast-net on the pull up from the lake, and then trying not to touch/net them any more than absolute needed - ideally it goes cast-net to boat tank, and boat tank to dock tank and that's it - small net only touching them once.

It can be a pain, and you will get greedy and catch too many at once and find you're taking multiple 5 gal buckets of dead shad out to dispose of them somewhere a few times - but it is a nice thing this time of year to be able to get down late on a Friday and be fishing with good bait at sun-up on Saturday AM.


Now, one thought - have a home tank at home..... bring a load of fresh gizzards back at the end of the weekend - babysit them over the week at home and take hardened, cured bait with you back to the lake

[lund1]

Gents - thanks for all the thoughtful comments...especially Yam's encouragement to just "get the boat" ( I visited my brother in Punta Gorda, Fla this weekend. He just took delivery on a 24' Pathfinder Bay that is absolutely beautiful......got me thinking about the 22' but boy is it crazy expensive...too rich for my blood).
I did speak with Shad Shack and Chris said the 200 or custom larger wouldn't really do the job of long term storage. He does offer to build a dock tank from a 500g water tank similar to what Jason has....thinking about it.
I guess my ski lift bait cage concept doesn't deserve much merit...scratching that idea.
Interested in hearing from more guys that have success ( or failure) storing bait for a couple weeks or more....as always....everyone's comments are much appreciated. We are surely lucky to have such a great community of fellowship.

[R22]

Nov 7, 2018 11:33:26 GMT -5 mwardncsu said:

The fundamental key to success unfortunately is being near the tank for the 1st 3 days after filling it with a load of bait - remove any that go belly up, and keeping filters clean. Once you get them past those 1st few days they are a lot easier and you'll likely kill them from starvation after many weeks. If you can schedule things to come up and make a bait run and fill the tank on a Thur evening or Fri AM, keep the filters clean several times throughout the weekend in between fishing, and hang till Monday AM or so, then there is a much better change - still always have the possibility of a few going belly up and killing things while you're gone, but those 1st 3 days are critical.

I don't know if the filtering to have clear water is so critical to their health, as much as it is for our satisfaction to watch them swim around but seriously, one key need of clearer water is that you can find the ones that died and are laying on the bottom so you can get them out before they make the rest of the tank go belly up.

Also, VERY MINIMAL HANDLING is key - this from from how you retrieve the cast-net on the pull up from the lake, and then trying not to touch/net them any more than absolute needed - ideally it goes cast-net to boat tank, and boat tank to dock tank and that's it - small net only touching them once.

It can be a pain, and you will get greedy and catch too many at once and find you're taking multiple 5 gal buckets of dead shad out to dispose of them somewhere a few times - but it is a nice thing this time of year to be able to get down late on a Friday and be fishing with good bait at sun-up on Saturday AM.


Now, one thought - have a home tank at home..... bring a load of fresh gizzards back at the end of the weekend - babysit them over the week at home and take hardened, cured bait with you back to the lake

Mike is correct on all of his points. There are a few things I would add. If you only want to keep gizzards over a long weekend, then emptying the tank and starting out fresh each week is definitely the way to go. If you do want to keep bait long term, then you will need to build and maintain the bio filter to match the gizzard population that you are trying to keep. Placing 2 gizzards in your tank will allow a bio built for 2 gizzards. The same applies for 30, 60 or 200. It takes time (at least 30 days) to build this bio in the filters. Once the bio is sufficient to host your catch, things get a ton easier.