I have a 30 gallon shad shack , had no problems with keeping shad alive in the tank , but when I take them out of the bait tank and put them in the lake water , they act like they have the bends and die 5 minutes after you put them on the hook! I use city water , treat water with salt, amquil and shad keeper, How do you keep your shad alive in the summer months , I'm fishing about 27 feet deep. Any help would be awesome, thanks

Very hard. Probably has to do with change in water temp and conditions.

I keep my bait tank water no more than 10 degrees different than the lake, and dont overcrowd it. My tank is 30 gallons, and I usually put 25-30 7”-8” shad in it and they do fine. If you mess around with the smaller shad, you can put a little more. Even up in late July and August, I can keep them good for a couple of days.

Could be a lot of things. Shad are so sensitive. One thing that has helped me fish with shad all day long at PK and end up throwing back several dozen in good shape was adding Zeolite to my charcoal filter. I have a small 17 gallon tank and I put at least 8 dozen shad in there last week. I put a cup of salt, a 1/4 cup of shad keeper and filled with lake water. Later in the summer I will add some frozen bottles as needed to cool the lake water, as the surface temp will get in the high 80's and the difference in that and the temp at 35 feet will be a lot and will kill the shad.

Best of luck.

We use stress coat and ammo lock with salt. The ammo lock helps get rid of the ammonia they put off. Stress coat and ammo lock are cheaper than. Shad keeper. And you can easily find it at the pet store in the fish section. I have also read to put hydrogen peroxide in the water. We have not tried the hydrogen peroxide yet.

Watch for thermocline as well...

The struggle is real my friend!

The advice I was given was to try and keep the bait tank temp within 3-5 degrees of the lake temp to avoid shock. Plus obviously don't fish below thermocline.

Check the temp of the water before you add any shad to it. Your tap water is probably quite a bit colder (20-30 degrees colder sometimes) than the lake water. In my experience, shad can handle going from warm lake water into the significantly colder water in the bait tank without much of an issue. They can not handle the shock of going from 65-70 degree bait tank water into 90 degree lake water.