Make a Minnow Trap from a Two Liter Plastic Bottle

This is a quick and easy way to make a minnow trap out of a two liter plastic bottle.

Equipment needed:
a two liter plastic bottle
a knife
five or six feet of cordage
some small wire or paper clips (helpful but not necessary)
a nail or ice pick (helpful but not necessary)
some kind of bait ( bread crumbs, dog food, etc)

Directions:
1. Remove the bottle cap and dispose
2. Using your knife, cut off the cap end of the bottle at the point where the bottle starts to taper down from its full width.

3. Use you knife, nail, or ice pick to poke two holes in the bottom of the bottle.

4. Thread your cordage through these two holes and tie the cordage off.

5. Use your knife, nail, or ice pick to poke six or eight small holes in the body of the bottle. This will allow air in the bottle to escape, and help the bottle to sink down into the water.
6. Now the tricky part. Invert the top of the bottle that you cut off, and insert it down into the body of the bottle.
7. Line the edges of the bottle up and use your knife, nail, or ice pick to poke a small hole through both layers of the plastic. Make the hole about a quarter inch back from the edge and be careful not to cut all the way to the edge.

8. Take some small wire, a piece of paper clip, or some small string and thread it through both hole, loop the string over the edges of the plastic and tie a knot in the string.
9. When this is done poke two or three more holes around the rim of the trap and run wire or string through them just as you did the first hole.

10. Drop a few pieces of bread or some dog food down into the bottle, and you are done.

Take your trap down to the water, push it down to get some water inside the bottle, then toss the bottle a few feet out into the water. The air will escape through the holes that you punched, and the bottle will sink. Use the string attached to the bottom to tie the trap off to a log or rock and let the trap sit for twenty-four hours.

If there are any minnows in the area, they will swim into the bottle to get at the bait, and then they won’t be able to find their way out. All you have to do is pull the trap in and remove your minnows.

Be aware that because of the small size of this trap you will not get many minnows in one trap (I usually get three to six). So if you want to get a good mess of minnows, you should put out multiple traps.