So Lily wanted to try this minnow trap based on a video she watched on YouTube.
The only reasonable, transparent container we had was a mouth wash bottle. My wife directed her to wash it out really well, and then I had fill it with water and coffee grounds. The coffee grounds were to help remove some of the minty, antiseptic flavor of the bottle and also work as an attractant to the fish. We dumped out the water, added some coffee grounds, grabbed a few slices of bread and headed to the lake.
Lily folded the tabs, that were left from cutting an X into the bottle, back away from the cut. This provides a good sized opening and the tabs help keep the bread from floating out of the bottle. She used sand to hold the bottle down since we could not find any rocks, and placed the trap in the shallows. We had minnows within seconds so she pulled it up and Drew and I used the minnows as bait on my ultralight. She did note that with some float modifications and utilizing some fishing string through the bottle cap it would be possible to set up a trap like this that you could toss out into deeper water. The floats would control the depth. We will have to give this a try sometime.
Some things you may want to bring in addition would be a small aquarium net, like a brine shrimp net, which would aid in removal of the minnows and an additional container to store the minnows in after trapping.
A very successful trip though, with the minnows she caught we were able to catch 7 Bluegill, 2 Large mouth Bass and a Bull Head Catfish. The soft shell turtle also returned to brake my line, which was better than having to deal with him on the bank or losing another flip flop. Try the bait trap with the kids; I think they will enjoy it.
Below is the video we stole the idea from and some pics of the fish we caught.