keeping leeches for fall

[clarkend]

beef liver.....I opened the cooler after an hour or so and a bunch of them were sucking on it....I removed it and rinsed and cooled the leeches back down the next AM.

I am watching them to see how they look.

[Rapaleye]

I have used leech bedding in the past and kept them in the fridge for what seemed like weeks, possibly a month an a half. I think I change the bedding once maybe.
Just curious why try to keep them so long. I always try to "match the hatch". In our lake leeches are gone my mid August and the new little ones don't grow very big by fall. I switch to cranks and crawlers in August and then back to large minnows in the fall. Trying to follow the way nature does it.
Jim

[Bobber Down]

I have great success using leeches in the fall. I never subscribed to the " match the hatch" theory. If I did I would never be able to use night crawlers again.... never seen them "hatch in any lake I have ever fished. I give the fish a wide variety and let them decide.

Bobber

[gonecribbin]

If you have jumbos, they are probably spawning and dying. I learned this the hard way last year. Theres a reason you cant buy jumbos in Sept.
Ive kept regular leeches alive over winter in a aerated cooler, I put mosquito netting in the cooler, I was told they need something to wipe their slime off on occasion.
I thought I would have the secret weapon in Spring Valley in March a couple years ago by keeping leeches alive all winter, got down there to find out they just received their first shipment of leeches

[Dabluz]

I've never caught anything on leeches. I was using carnivorous leeches. I read that I was not using the right kind of leeches.

I rarely (maybe never) have seen a partially digested leech in a fish's stomach.

I figure that the fish thinks he is going to eat a nightcrawler so I might as well just use nightcrawlers.