My boat has a livewell but its useless and really i never cared as I thought I'd never use bait but as things have changed I've been using live bait bout 50% of the time but these whitebait's are hard to keep alive. So I looked at some portable livewells and found one at cabelas on sale for $99 (reg $210) and only neg complaint was about the aerator being junk and I was going to buy a PowerBubbles" anyway so I ordered it. Came in yesterday in 2 packages, the first was aerator and low and behold it's a PowerBubbles (which is $50 itself) and then the unit. Actually the unit is pretty nice and fits well and doubles as a seat.. whooo. I needed to get some holes drilled and stuff so I could get out early and get some baits in there and see how they last... then phone rang and its BA and long time later (12 something) I get packed up and headed out to find whitebait.

On way to bridge I noticed it was slack tide.... ugggg. So pulled up to bridge and threw some chum but nothing.... later when tide started going there was still nothing so I blindly threw net and after a few casts had about 4 -5 dozen whites & greenies. So was going to head out in bay but about then wind kicked up so I stayed in and fished a few docks in the "lake". Nothing on the usual docks and was going to head in when I decided to hit the one last lighted dock( which is weird for me because I prefer dark docks for snook) and as I was drifting up I could see a few real good snook under it. It has a really low snook light so u can see under dock pretty well. So I thru a few chums of whities out and they were gone and as I got closer I could see a big mama patrolling a post but she turned away from my offerings. I threw again and had it almost back to boat and was watching 3 good snook trying to hex one into crushing my whitie but they just stared and as I was reeling it up a shadow closed in from below so I let bait go and it was a snook about 6-7 ft from me ( the others were maybe 15ft) and I saw whitie coming back up and up came snook and gave me a perfect bucket mouth $$ shot! was awesome! then slapped lips shut staring right at me then turned sideways and just sat there and i was like "what??" so I gave a bit of a tug and that woke her up and she bolted for dock and zigzagged 2 posts then wrapped around center post (which I can clearly see) and I had her pinned to center post. SO I gave in a lil pressure and slowly worked her back around post and thru zigzag then she was blasting off again but I was in open water so hit trolling motor and got her out in lake as she tried to go back to dock but I dont think so! Got her in and up to boat for quick pic and measure, wasn't nearly as big as last one but still a decent almost 28". She revived quickly and was off but all the others had left.

Worked my way home stopping at a goto dock and fished it a bit and got crushed a few times but only got a ladyfish to the boat. It's daybreak now so headed over the small close flat to use up rest of baits, which btw the new stuff worked awesome and only had like 3 die. Got up on flat and took splitshots off to freeline whities and thru a fresh one out and soon as it hits it gets blasted by an actually decent fighting 22" trout. Get some smaller trout then one bait left so I saved it for home and my dock. Throw it out and get flounder that was decent of my dock.

Now bed

How did the live well work? I have one on my boat that I call the "Dead Well" because it is like a gas chamber for sardines. I've been thinking about one of those, so I would be interested to know how it did with your bait.

Great report!!! Love the baitwell.

If you plan on keeping whitebait alive they would do much much better with a system that circulates the water. Aerating it is only half the battle. I use a "Keep-Alive" system when transporting bait in my truck or when I did a lot of pier fishing. The Keep-alive sytem aerates and circulates the same water within the well, it does not provide fresh salt water into the well so sometime removing half the water and replacing it with some new water would help as well. It runs for hours off of a small lawn n garden battery.

fishfish18 wrote:
Was great so far. Hell of a deal though. I'm going to add an upper drain hole to get all the bubble crud out and run a aerator pump thru my drain to add new water and it will be good to go. I had several dozen whitebait, greenbacks & a few lady fish in there and only 3 died. I was impressed.

Lostmans1 wrote:
That was my plan but the aerator didnt work when mounted on side... wouldnt suck up the water thru hose so going to put it into the drain hole since I was going to close it anyways and just run the tubing up and in and either put it on a timer or a foot switch to pump in the water and then as it fills it will drain out all the bad crud on top.

I looked at lawn mower and motorcycle batteries the other day and will probably do that too

I did take out 2 gallons and replaced one time. I have extra bilge's and might put one in just to circulate the water but they were very happy fishies in there but I'm sure that will change as it gets warmer.

Freakin sweet bro. You're a fishing machine! :fishing:

You can drop in a cool pac too. Like the ones you use in a lunch box, or ice in a zip lock baggie. That will help keep more oxygen in the water. Greenies are delicate creatures. Quite the pain in the a$$ sometimes. My favorite bait, and candy to a Snook.

Passion overcomes equipment. Like I said in that article I wrote about our friend Kris Greene's custom rods, if you can catch a fish you can catch a fish. Having the best live well in the world or a $3,500 fly rod ain't gonna put you on the fish.

:wife-fishin