Live Minnows in Ukiah??

Everyone knows I am a huge fan of live bait, and I actually asked Jef the other day where the closest place to get minnows was. With that known I will give my .02 cents. I have no idea how many you would sell per week so if that is all you really needed read no further.
IMO they are not that hard to raise in the the cooler months of the year. Many times I have kept leftovers alive for weeks. I would keep them in different "homes", for awhile I had 5 or 6 that I kept in a 4 gal aquarium trying to grow them into super jumbos.lol The problem with that was having to clean the tank. My best solution was a large 15-20 gal plastic tote with an airstone and pump, with this method I would just change the water out whenever dirty, that would depend on how many I had in there at a time.
 Im thinking that the minnows market is probably best in the fall, winter and spring months anyway. I know that is when I buy the most. When I buy them I usually get 1-2 dozen large/jumbo or whatever you want to call them (nice 3-4" or bigger if available) and a dozen or two crappie minnows. If the bite was hot may even go back for more.
    I do agree with what Chris said about ease of access to live minnows may possibly hurt the population of mendo stripers though. Ive caught many a striper on live minnows or blue gils when I was fishing the delta and very few if any were gut hooked, but that may be due to the fact I use a gami wide gap hook, which usually gets them in the corner of the mouth. Id say cut bait is more fatal to the fish, but I see the minnows hurting the population by.... anybody can catch a striper on a minnow.
    The 10am thing may be a bit of an issue, but what time are you open till? Many times I would buy my bait the night before so I would not have to wait for the bait shop to open at 6. Yes there will be people who complain that 0600 is not early enough , we call them AOTY chasers   Hope some of this helps!

Circle hooks work fine.  My striper was hooked in the middle on the top of the jaw. It was released and swam away fine.

We're all well aware of the merits of wide-gaps and circles...but should we believe that EVERY live minnow angler who goes to fish Mendocino will only use wide-gaps or circles?  If they're intent on keeping a limit of stripers, I think they'll want to maximize their chances of hooking up by letting the fish swallow the minnow.

Even if the minnow anglers do use circles and wide-gaps, I'd still predict increased harvest and a quicker death to the striper fishery in Mendocino.

My uncle managed the marina/resort at Lake Mendo for a couple/few years back in the day (1990s), and I used to visit him and fish the lake from time to time. We'd just take a dip net out on the dock and dip up some shad if we wanted live bait.

I agree with what others are saying. I just don't see a huge market for live minnows in that area. Berryessa is known to fish well with live minnows. Mendo and Sonoma just don't have that reputation.

#baitfishlivesmatter

Having grown up in Ukiah in the late 70s and 80s and fishing Mendo I remember the bait shop by the damn having the best minnows.
They sold quite a bit, but back then we had fish and water. 

From an anglers perspective I'd say the question shouldn't be how many minnows can u sell to make a few more bucks, but how can you help repair and improve what used to be a great fishery and secure future generations will be able to target stripers in the lake.

Diamond Jims used to have pictures of 30 and 40 pound stripers pulled outa Mendo on their glass counter.
Highly doubt with the water sold and the current regs that lake will ever return to its glory days.
Sad really.

I'd buy around 200 minnows a year from you.

We're all well aware of the merits of wide-gaps and circles...but should we believe that EVERY live minnow angler who goes to fish Mendocino will only use wide-gaps or circles?  If they're intent on keeping a limit of stripers, I think they'll want to maximize their chances of hooking up by letting the fish swallow the minnow.

Even if the minnow anglers do use circles and wide-gaps, I'd still predict increased harvest and a quicker death to the striper fishery in Mendocino.

Not everyone knows about wide gaps and circles, the more we educate the more fish could be saved! Allover not just mendo.

Agree 100% If they are easier to catch more people will do it and therefore more people will likely keep them, no doubt. Whatever the bait or lure they use. Catch and release fisherman are probably outnumbered by meat hunters and I would say and catch and release live bait fisherman like myself are even less common.

sorry to get off topic Jef but I guess its good to think of the effects as well as the profits that could come from the bait being readily available in ukiah.

I like where Matt is going with the line of what can be done to help save the once awesome fishery!

The once awesome fishery was once so awesome because they used to stock it. They stopped stocking the stripers in there 5 or 6 years ago, so once the stripers currently in the lake are wiped out, that's it.

Go back in the archives a few years and read all of the reports from the DOZENS of us who used to go up there and CnR minnow caught stripers.

Highly doubt with the water sold and the current regs that lake will ever return to its glory days.

I gotta agree there.  Once the striper population drops to below fishable levels (likely within the next decade), the lake will be competing with Clear Lake's largemouth and catfish to attract anglers.  That's gonna be a tough sell.  The odds of getting stripers stocked in the lake again are probably very low, given that the state is veering away from stocking of non-native species.

But, I think the resident crappie could be a glimmer of light for this fishery.  Clear Lake has crappie, but they're heavily fished and that fishery seems to act like a yo-yo.  Something I noticed on my visit to Mendo was a severe lack of cover.  There were vast expanses of open-water habitat with no cover in sight.  This issue is exacerbated when lake levels are low.  Here on Lake Almanor, a local group will annually call for everyone's Christmas trees following the holidays.  The trees are stacked in a huge pile.  Later in the year, the group ties the trees into bundles and anchors them onto the lake bottom with cinder blocks to provide habitat for smallmouth bass.

If a program were enacted to increase available cover in the form of sunken timber at various depths (not just the shoreline), this could provide a beneficial effect for the crappie fishery by providing cover for the species even with fluctuating water levels.  Just a thought (and totally off-topic from the original post, I know!).

Are there no spawning opportunities for the stripers in Lake Mendo? It seems like some of the fish caught must be younger than 5-6 years old.

The only age vs. size charts I could find seemed to be for East Coast fish. It's a much different situation over there...

Pretty sure there isn't suitable spawning habitat in Mendo. 

It would definitely be awesome if the striper fishery became self-sustaining but that's a pipe dream I think.

Circle hooks work fine.  My striper was hooked in the middle on the top of the jaw. It was released and swam away fine.

Looks like a whiper

Seems like a pretty minimal investment to get started...considering my unused minnows stay alive for months with a simple aerator inside an icechest. You won't get rich selling minnows, but they potentially draw more customers into the shop--perhaps a segment of customers who would not normally shop there. So make sure to post lots of pics of kayak-caught fish next to the bait tank...convert those boaters into yakkers and those simple minnows just translated into a $1500 purchase.

Pretty sure there isn't suitable spawning habitat in Mendo. 

It would definitely be awesome if the striper fishery became self-sustaining but that's a pipe dream I think.

On one trip earlier this year, I saw both a female with eggs and a milking male caught.  The fish that were stocked originally aren't triploids so I guess there could be a chance of them spawning.  I know I have caught fish that seem to be too small to be 6-7 years old.  That's when the last of the stocking was done, from what I've gathered.