Y ISK WH CH TOR

When you’ve polished off a nicely shaped bottle of whisky (or your preferred drink), wash it and peel off the label. Fill it halfway with torch fuel. Feed a glass fibre wick through a small copper coupling (12 to 15 mm). Fit this into a larger coupling (15 to 20 mm). Place this in the mouth of the bottle. Set it on your patio table, light the wick and open another bottle.

• ½ cup molasses • ½ cup maple syrup • 1 ½ cup soya sauce • 1 tbsp Liquid Smoke • ¼ cup Worcestershire • 2 tbsp fine-ground black pepper • 1 tbsp garlic powder • 1 tbsp onion powder

AS LONGER DAYS and rising temperatures warmed the lake behind our house this spring and the lake’s fish, frogs and reptiles gathered in the nearest cove, three of my boys began scouring the shallows for prey, using dip nets and minnow traps to capture all manner of life. Soon they had an assortment of creatures in aquariums in one of their bedrooms and a proposal for their parents to consider: can we build large outdoor tanks to keep bait alive and ready for fishing season? The lake’s largemouth bass and pickerel, they said, would be more likely to strike fish from their own habitat – bait that also happens to be free.

The idea had merit, as long as costs could be contained. And so we took it on.

Mick, who is 14, did the planning. First he took stock of what was already available at home or on our next-door neighbours’ property – a pair of plastic lobster-bait barrels that we had picked up over the years, several old pressuretreated beams, an abundance of 1,8-metre slats from a fallen cedar fence, a rectangular plastic basin about 40 centimetres deep, boxes of varied fasteners, a slightly bent roll of galvanised wire mesh, about 1,2 metres of white polymer trim board and a small pile of 75-centimetre lichen-encrusted drops from a dock built years ago with composite deck boards.

He then set to sketching a design and compiling a list of what we would need to finish the job. His plan called for shortening the height of the barrels and securing them in a simple wooden-and-composite-board frame. The rectangular basin would be seated between them. It would be divided into three chambers and serve as the system’s heart. One chamber would receive outflow from the bait barrels, another would be filled with gravel for filtering and a third would house a pump, which would send freshly filtered water back into the two barrels via hoses joined at a T-junction. The system would run in a figure-eight loop, with the pump powered by an outdoor outlet at a tool shed, next to which the apparatus would be built. I offered one modification: why not place a portion of the tanks below ground, in the cooler earth, to keep the water from overheating on hot days? My wife required another: a child-safe top.

To complete such a system, we bought several items from the timberyard and pet-supply store – a pair of pressure-treated studs (rated for ground contact), a bag of clean gravel, a 2 000-litres-per-hour electric pump and a tube of aquariumgrade silicone. A stop in the plumbing aisle yielded hoses and fittings to connect it all together.

The early stages of the project went smoothly. I trust Mick with tools and he knows how to use many of them quite well. With a jigsaw he reduced the barrel heights, then measured their diameters; with the mitre saw, he cut pieces of pressuretreated studs for a frame. The dock drops were refashioned as side braces that matched the barrels’ contours, holding things snug. Next he cut the composite trim board into panels to divide the basin’s interior. Once he secured them with silicone, the filter was in place, with gravel in the centre compartment.

The work became trickier as Mick shifted to the plumbing. In a perfect world everything would fit and be level, allowing the pump and gravity to work in practice as they had in design. But as we dug the holes where the tanks would sit we were surprised by what we should have expected: a thick tree root. This caused one tank to sit higher than the other. The plumbing holes were no longer level with each other. An afternoon of jury-rigging ensued, as we cut fresh drainage with a holesaw and tinkered with hose lengths and placement until the flow into the barrels was equalised. We added another pair of drainage pipes to achieve equilibrium between the pump and the barrels’ drainage. Water flowing out now matched water flowing in – an important point, or the centre basin would end up dry and the pump dead.

The child-safe top was formed by making a lattice with fence slats, which sandwiched the wire mesh and then building a 50 x 150 pressure-treated frame that stood on post legs just above the height of the tanks. A pair of aged door hinges provided the last touch, allowing the lattice lid to be opened and closed like the lid on a huge cooler. This would do more than stop small children, it would discourage thieving little four-legged creatures.

Our bait tanks were done, ready for use.

The next day, when I checked on the pump, I saw the first fish swimming inside, along with a painted turtle. The boys had already been busy.