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"Live Bait" Vending Machines: A twenty-four hour bait shop
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by Trevor McCourt
For all those early morning fishers who get up long before the bait shop opens there is a new way to catch your bait. If you pop a couple of dollars into a machine you can get live minnows, night crawlers, wax worms, leeches, maggots and even crickets. The "LIVE BAIT!" comes out in a Styrofoam container and is said to be fresh, maybe even fresher then the bait shops bait. One disadvantage is that the machine bait costs almost a dollar more then the bait from the shop but in order to get bait at two in the morning you should have to pay a small price.
The idea originated in 1993 in Northeastern Pennsylvania where a fisherman named Joe Meyer converted an old sandwich machine into a small bait shop. The fisherman then sold the machine to Bob Williams who now owns 30 machines and sells over 10,000 night crawlers each week. Then in 1995, Vending Consultants Incorporated noticed that some of its clients were converting old sandwich machines into bait machines. To take advantage of this new market they invented a new type of machine to hold specifically live bait and began selling these machines all across the country. Right now there are over thousands of machines spread out across nearly every state.
The machines cost between $3,500 and $4,000 and keep the internal temperature 40 to 45 degrees. The bait is held in a plastic bag in which, an oxygen tablet has been added. The plastic bag sits inside a Styrofoam cup and not only does Styrofoam insulate the bait but it also floats if you happen to drop it in the water. The machine burns no more electricity then a coke machine, a solid 110 volts and in order to guarantee freshness the machines have sixteen vending motors that rotate the bait. So instead of digging bait up in your back yard, leave your pail and shovel and pay a dollar or two for "LIVE BAIT!"