how to catch under water otters

I have some otters that are tearing up the floatation on a house boat and its under neath enough that I cannot get to their nest. I want to use 160's suspended with wood thru the eye on the 160's I was thinking about maybe sticking a dead bait fish on the triggers and hopefully they will want to eat them. I've never gone after otter before so I'm looking for any advice I can get, are otter's trap shy or no? how hard is it to catch an otter in a live catch trap on the deck where they are making a mess also? again any idea's would be great. thanks

a hoop net works well under water, just bait with some live fish

I tried for 2 weeks about ten years ago putting live fish in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket in a clear stream guarded by a 220. That did not work. I caught a bunch of otters, but they were in standard sets after I took out the buckets in the same stream. I know of others that it did not work for, also. One of those is George Wacha from Alabama.

I have caught them on a couple occasions using live fish in shallow water using live fish for bait in a Koro at a crossover.

I tried fish on the 330 trigger with no luck on otter.

I know of several instances, recently, where otters were entering tanks at fish hatcheries and submerged cage traps with live fish, on a stringer in the trap, was used for bait and otters caught. They prefer catfish, trout, or an oily fish.

The larger the more open the better. Traps were set on the bottom.

Grandpas trading post makes a cage that has a simple push door the otter find the door to get in and can,t get out. You just put fish in and submerge trap. Bill Weeks, the original maker of the trap, said he had best luck using crawfish or frogs for bait. The frogs would be used when the trap was floated.

I would think as beaverfoot said that a hoop net would work, but in the years trapping turtles I never caught an otter in my hoop nets or new I had one in the trap. Plenty of alligators, but no otters. I really see little difference than a cage when submerged. I would think I would want heavy netting on the hoop net.

I forgot, I have a relatively recent picture of one caught in a cage in Tenn., at a dock, but I don,t know how it was baited.

Dave Vinke would be a good one to respond to this one.

thanks for the help. I'll fgive some of these idea's a try I can't find my backbreaker wich I have a lot of luck with on beaver and actually everything else. I'll order some more but hopefully this job will be over with before it could get here. again thanks

Try to find the otter toilet. River Otter come out of the water to eat, defecate, and mark their territory and you can catch them there. I'm sure someone is not happy to have a foul smelling otter toilet on their houseboat, dock or boat. These people will also pay you to catch the otters. You can use bobcat sized cages but make sure they are very stout cages. A big otter can bust out of a 1081 or a LG T5.

I haven't caught a lot of otter but, they are hard on 330 traps. I would think 160 would be to small. I have caught several otter in Comstock cage traps. (single door beaver traps) They are a good strong trap.

160s are too small IMHO.
I have never had any success with bait.
I had a job at some net pens and tried about everything including every kind of critter that swims. No luck. I eventually caught 22 otter but I have to admit only one at the pens under the bait house. All the rest of them were caught where they came to shore in conventional sets.

I have caught a couple of otter in 160 conibears submerged with artificial fish on the trigger. You can get artificial fish in fishing tackle stores that are really lifelike. If I wanted to trap for otter with a baited trigger I would use a 220 bodygrip or larger.