Seinin' minnies

Got the car packed and now we're driving on a hot Illinois summer afternoon towards one of the many creeks that run through the farm and woodlands. Minnow seine and minnow buckets are in the back seat of the car. I'm sitting shotgun with my dad driving. Parking in the entrance to a corn field near the creek we get the net and buckets. Dad pulls on some hip waders. We walk down the road to the bridge over the creek. We hop the barbwire fence and fight our way through head high weeds to the water.

First we'd pull the liner out of the minnow buckets -- kind of like the liners from spaghetti cookers -- perforated to let water drain out when lifted from the solid outer bucket. We'd fill the outer bucket with water from the creek then force the liner into it -- aerating the water.

We each take one end of the seine and unroll it. The seine is a fine mesh net about 12-feet long with 4-foot long rake handles tied on each end. The bottom is weighted with lead; the top held up with cork floats. Dad has me stand in the shallows holding one end of the seine tight to the bottom. He wades out first down stream then in a big circle back upstream and finally back in toward the shallow sloping bank. The whole time he's moving he's saying, "Keep it on the bottom." Usually silver fish were left flopping in the net on the shore -- plus rocks, weeds, plastic cups, and other left overs from the streambed. We'd pick out the biggest minnows plus any crawfish we'd find and throw them in the minnow bucket -- keeping a rough count. Those times when we didn't get anything worth keeping, Dad would say, "You didn't keep it on the bottom. They all got out." I was probably 18 years old before I figured out it really wasn't my fault.

We'd move upstream and repeat the process until we had 150 or so baits in the buckets. Before leaving we'd pull the liners, dump the water and replace it with fresh, then plunge the liners back in. Good big bait meant good big fish. And we were off to get those big fish.