Both are good ways to freeze shad. Salt helps keep them from breaking apart when they defrost.
I would like to know what Chemicals are used to keep them "looking fresh" on the warm store shelves?
A couple of years ago, I froze several hundred shad caught during the winter, when they accumulate in large numbers in deeper holes of creeks. I first vaccum sealed them and stuck them in the freezer, enough to look like 2 bread bags full.
Summer came around, and I was threatened if I left them in the freezer, so I put them in a cooler (those blue lid coolers like they sell at Academy/Walmart) with plenty of ice and took them to the lake and then set the cooler in the cuddy. The original plan was to use them as chum or frozen bait, but they didn't seem to help when using them as chum, and I still caught and had success with live bait.
I left the cooler in the boat, and put the boat back in the storage unit (secure, hot tin roof type facility), and planned on returning the next day (a sunday) but didn't. The temperature's reached around 108' several times that week. When I did return the following weekend, I found that the bag-of-bait had exploded in the cooler (fortunately, there was enough supplies/stuff on the lid to keep the mess contained to the cooler).
I guess they defrosted and then started to decay in the bag, giving off enough gas to explode one of those Tilia vaccum seal bags (1/2 of it was ripped right down the side).
It tooks lots and lots of bleach to clean the smell out of the cooler
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