This section deals primarily with making bait for fishing through the ice for rainbows, char, stocked king and silver salmon. Bait for burbot, pike, and lake trout can be made the same way.

We usually start with shrimp, salmon eggs, squid or octopus. I usually make a jar of each.

Over the summer I got a hand-me-down octopus. Hand-me-down octopuses are kind of sketchy because you don't really know where it came from, like gas station sushi. One thing hand-me-down octopuses are good for is bait. I saved this one for ice fishing bait.

First I dice it up into 1/4 to 3/8 inch chunks for trout and char, one inch for burbot . in this picture is shrimp. I using commercially made salmon egg cure here.

You can make your own with salt, borax and food coloring. About one tablespoon of salt to four cups of borax and color to suit works well

It's left over night to cure and it looks like this.

It's jarred up and put into the fridge with the rest of the bait we have on hand for the ice fishing season.

You can buy bait at the sporting goods store but here's the thing. Every one else buys bait at the sporting goods store, or almost everyone else. And that's fine, if you want to catch fish like everyone else. Everyone else also buys jigs, and lures at the sporting goods store. In my opinion, the fish get to look at those common baits, jigs and lures all year long and learn to be shy of them.

You can watch down the ice hole and see the fish approach your offerings carefully, apprehensively. They will try to knock the bait off of the hook and catch it on the free fall, or nibble it off of the hook. Anything but take the whole thing into their mouths and pull the bobber under. They have been stung before.

Instead, we make our own baits, tie our own jigs and make our own jigging spoons. Anything to make our baits different from all the others used on the lake. We die our bait different colors and add different flavors to them like bacon, garlic, hot sauce, or herring oil. I am not trying to tell you that fish like the taste of garlic, bacon or anything else, it just different and something they weren't stung by the last time they tried to eat it. Different is attractive.

We tie different kinds of jigs, of different colors, with different actions. Something that the fish haven't seen a hundred times already.

Fish have commitment issues. A real neat trick is to make shrimp and other soft baits tough by cooking them in the microwave "too much" before curing. Everyone knows meat that is cooked too much is tough to eat. Store bought, cured, died, shrimp is good bait, but it's not the best. It's tender and can be knocked off of the hook easily. Fish will try to get the bait off of the hook without getting the hook in their mouths. When it's toughened up in the microwave it's harder to get off the hook without committing. Fish seem to get frustrated at it and finally commit to the bite more aggressively.

Good luck, have fun, be safe.