PrintNovember 6, 2012
This video is about making a fully functional primitive survival fish and minnow trap using a digging stick and the shore of a lake. Actually shows the trap being made, how to set it, and hopefully lets you see some minnows swimming into the trap.
Generally speaking, this trap can be made, set, and triggered in a hurry and shouldn’t require a great expenditure of calories or resources to create. In a survival situation those are all things worth considering.
If you want to catch bigger fish, make the trap bigger. If you place some cover over the trap it will provide shade and draw in crawfish and other critters as well, like frogs for example. An old board, some spruce bows, cattails, reeds, grass, rocks will all serve as good cover. This is not required for simply catching minnows and such though.
Steps to make the trap:
Dig a hole in a couple feet from shore
Dig a channel out into the water from the hole
Push some dirt or rocks up near the entrance to serve as a trigger to close the trap off once the fish or crawdads are inside.
That’s all there is to it! This trap actually works quite well, the minnows can be left in the trap to be gathered at leisure. they will remain alive indefinitely.
The design of the body of this trap is quite similar to a primitive survival water filter which is dug into the shore or bank of a swamp, pond, or lake that uses the ground to crudely filter sediment from potentially stagnant and unsafe water. Of course the channel would be left off if you were making a filter. 🙂
These types of filters still require treating the water by boiling, solar or chemical means as the filter itself only removes sediment, it does nothing to remove bacteria, odors, and microorganisms from the water.
Also, it’s important to realize that many animals, such as geese, ducks, and raccoon defecate along the shoreline. So, making a filter of this type would likely introduce microorganisms into water that may have not been there to begin with.
Knowing that this lake in particular is spring fed I personally would just drink the water as is and not filter it, although, I don’t recommend anyone else drink the water.
