The best place to set is on the inside of a curve. In slack water you will have to keep moving your set as the water rises and falls. Undoubtedly that is the best cold water set I have ever tried, and it has been a complete success with me.
I use the cubby set for mink. Before severe weather sets in I take two boards six or eight feet long, lean them against each other V shape, put water vole carcass (rabbit, chicken or fish is also good) in center and a trap at each end, about one foot from end. I also have the hollow log set. It is on the same principle as the cubby set. A cubby is easily built. You can make them out of stone if you can't get boards.
CHAPTER XVI.
LOG AND OTHER SETS.
My advice to all young trappers is, study the nature and habits of your game and you will be successful in taking all kinds of fur bearing animals. Here is one of my methods, writes a trapper, of taking mink around swamps and lakes where there are shallow springs that never freeze up.
The bait house: This should be built in about two inches of water, as follows: Get some sticks about one foot and a half long and drive one end in the mud in the shape of a horse shoe, with the tops leaned together and a door left in one side about three inches wide. The pen should be a foot wide. Now get some moss, grass or weeds (the moss from an old rat house is best) and cover over well. Lay a chip or chunk of wood back of the house and place a piece of fresh muskrat on it. Set the trap under water on the door with spring pointing to one side. If there is deep water near by the drowning wire is the best way to fasten traps, and if water is shallow fasten the trap to a long stone of about eight or ten pounds weight and place back as far as the chain will reach from the house.
There are certain springs around all lakes and swamps that a mink will visit every time that he comes that way, and if a house is made at these springs and kept baited every mink can be caught.
The bait hole: This is a good method to use along creeks and rivers before the water freezes over in the fall. Find a steep bank a foot or more high near the water and dig a hole back in a foot deep and about eight inches high and level with the water. Scoop the dirt out in front of the hole about two feet wide and two inches under the water; but don't get the hole so low as to let the water back in. Let the water come up to the mouth of the hole and set a No. 1 steel trap square in front of the entrance with the spring pointing away, and fasten so the mink will drown.
The log set: Find where an old log lies in the water, stick chunks of wood in under the log on the bank so the mink will have to pass around in the water under the log. Set trap, a No. 1, in an inch of water square under the log and stake out in deep water as far as possible. If a little bait is sprinkled on each side of the log it will hasten the capture of the mink.