I have been working at fishing with live shad lately. I have made some modifications to my live well that have helped keep shad alive longer but still not satisfactory. I can keep gizzard shad alive twice as long as threadfin shad but I have decided I need a shad tank. I have a decent filter setup figured out but still can’t keep them alive for longer than a couple hours even in the cooler weather we are having.

What is the best tank? I have heard lots about Grayline and Creekbank. Any others out there to consider? Anyone have a stay away from brand I need to watch out for?

I love my blue water bait tank and it came with high recommendations from long time guide, Bob Maindelle when I was in the market for one. I have some youtube videos showing the tank and talking about it. Another one that came highly recommended to me is the Shad Shack. I personally have never used one, but I have never heard or read anything negative about them. The filtration system is suppose to be even better as far as layers for keeping gizzard shad alive. Both these tanks offer incredible insulation.

Grayline is a good tank as well. I have heard the insulation factor is lacking compared to the previously mentioned two and probably not a great choice if you plan on doing live bait during any halfway warmer months. But, if you arn't trying to keep shad alive overnight or anything crazy probably any decent shad tank will work and sure the grayline is decent. Have never heard of Creekbank.

The change I made with the biggest improvement in their lifespan was to put them in one tank after i catch them and then move them to another after they foul the water. I use the minnow net to move them to a bait cooler with a frozen water bottle in it. I can keep them alive most of the day even in July with this method. My tanks aren’t rounded and only have a bubbler in the bait cooler so I keep the population down as well. A better tank is on my list of future upgrades.

Several good tanks out there. The only brands I have experience with is Greyline and Super Bait Tanks. They both work great.

I have a Greyline 50 gallon and the only thing I do not like about it is one of the pumps is inside the the tanks where the Shad are. The Shad try to hide behind the pump and I knock the air hose off sometimes when getting low on Shad and trying to catch the ones hiding.

Some of the other tanks like the super bait tank the pumps are located in a second chamber to there is nothing in the way.

I use a grayline. I think a tank works well if it has an ammonia filter. The ones at Cabelas do not have one and will be poor performers. Aeration is not the issue. I had my battery go bad for the tank this summer and didn't loose shad. Instead of spraying the water it was just trickling in with 5 dozen or more shad in the tank. The best thing I did for my tank was swap out the charcoal filter for a refillable one with zeolite and charcoal. I only have a 17 gallon tank and I can consistently overload it with shad. Never loose any anymore.

Creek Bank is a awesome tank

I have been using a 30 gallon Gray line since may of this year and I am really happy with it. I can keep a maximum load bait all day on the hottest day of the year and not lose any. The tank and its filtration is lot of this but it also comes down to how you handle / care for your bait.

Thank you all for your comments!

Respect the fish, I checked out a number of your YouTube videos today. I have always appreciated the way you share information like you do, videos are great! One question, in two of your videos you said to use Amquel, Shad Keeper and salt. In another video you said you only use Amquel and salt. Is the Shad Keeper necessary if I use Amquel and salt?

I haven’t been using anything in my current bait tank to treat the water and am now thinking I need to try treating the water before giving on my current setup and buying a bait tank. Just plain water might be the cause of not being able to keep shad alive for more than 2 hours. I have a decent filter system rigged up in my current 15 gallon bait tank with an adapter I use a 200 micron filter sock over that filters out lots of scales and brown slime and keeps the water pretty clean. I just can’t keep the fish from dying.

I’ll try treating the water next time out and keep y’all posted on what I find out.

Thanks for checking out the videos and glad you found them helpful!

Good catch, I do talk about using three products and then more recent videos I mention only using two, the Amquel and salt. I stopped using the Shad Keeper. It is pretty darn expensive. I never had any issues just using up to a cup of rock salt per 10 gallons of water and amquel to treat the city water I put in my tank.

I found the only issues I had, was trying to keep a lot of fish alive over night once summer hit. It is asking a lot to keep a few hundred shad alive over night in the summer unless you have something like an AC chiller....basically a big machine you plug into electricity and run the bait tank water to and through that chills it. Used for aquariums when fish are picky requiring a particular cool temperature to survive. The frozen milk jugs trick just won't cut it once the Texas summer sets in.

What I have found is I use artificial bait just about year round for hybrids. Sometimes my numbers will be a bit lower this way but I think it is worth it because it takes the work out of fishing and keeping bait alive so I generally try to avoid it. That can be very stressful when you plan to keep 150-200 plus shad alive over night then find out the bait is dead in the morning and have your kids/family/friends or clients waiting for you with $400 in their hands and you have bait that is dead.... I try to use live bait only between late April through mid June. It is prime time for using live bait although you never can go wrong unless its winter time....artificials will ALWAYS outperform live bait in winter time. Just food for thought

I got to talking about when I use artificial bait, when I use live bait, etc.....mentioned I started using mostly artificial bait because it is easy and fun.

My mind set is this, I want to catch whatever is biting, whatever is reliable and easy to catch, whatever is less stressful and work to pursue, whatever is going to give me a productive trip and sometimes chasing hybrids during certain times of the year is just tough with low number no matter what you do even with live bait. I.e. Summer is a Bee! Lemon is not worth the squeeze at times in my opinion. What I have learned and learning to do is target species on time of the year, pattern, etc that offers incredible fishing and different fishing species and styles throughout the year. This has brought so much joy to me and variety to my fishing adventures. Part of this fun puzzle and fishing calendar I have started to develop is when to use live bait as we have been discussing.

SO in January through April/May I love to target hybrids deadsticking and transitioning into a find, cast and retrieve method as water warms up. By May I'm using live shad almost exclusively and have incredible numbers with multiple fish on at once moments throughout a trip. In mid june, like a flip of a light switch fish will be gone over night. I believe the shad start to spawn and the fish leave predictable spots on structure and they VANISH! If you can figure out where the shad are spawning at I believe you will find a ton of fish but sometimes that is much easier said than done.

Take away message: early May through mid-June is Live bait time and hard to beat. Otherwise just creating a lot of work/stress that is likely very unnecessary to having a productive trip. Also easier to keep shad alive during this time.

Around May through July is incredible channel catfishing up in shallow water. Stink bait and bobber. I generally keep catfishing throughout summer but generally just slow down fishing in the hottest part of the summer. White bass can be productive.

In Fall, October and November, hybrids are starting to bite good but not nearly as good as the white bass. I target white bass throughout October and November until water gets cool enough to deadstick for hybrids. Would you rather catch 200-400 white bass in four hours or 30-50 hybrids in the same half day trip? I would rather catch 400 fish and they are easier to find and catch in my opinion.

Just food for thought since your name is "learnin to fish" figured you may like the insight : )

Clay, you are correct I am still “ learnin to fish”. We moved to central Texas about the same time I joined the TFF and I couldn’t even catch a cold. We bought a fish and ski boat that was perfect for our family for entertainment and worked well white bass fishing. I have learned a lot mainly from many kind people on the TFF like yourself, Dennis Christian, Gborg, 44Diesel and many others. The honesty and helpfulness of so many of you is appreciated more than you know. With all that help I have white bass down pretty good. We catch and release thousands and thousands of white bass every year on Waco, Whitney and Cedar Creek (we fish there when our lakes are flooded). If we don’t have a 100 count day on the clicker something was not quite right.

We bought a center console boat this summer to be able to add live bait to our tool chest of fishing options and invite more family and friends to fish with us in the larger boat. I am focused on live bait right now to learn that aspect I haven’t been able to learn due in the past due to equipment restrictions. I really do appreciate the insights about targeting different species durning the different parts of the year. We live very close to both Waco and Whitney so the live bait has intrigued me due to “accidentally” catching hybrids and striper when white bass fishing. I want to refine my skills so I can specifically go target and catch white bass, hybrids or striper when I want and not by getting lucky to have one hit a white bass setup.

We had great success this fall so far with striper at Whitney and did well on hybrids just this week at Waco on live bait, I just need to be able to keep them longer once I catch them. I will be reaching out to you to set up a trip to learn dead sticking hybrids. I took a striper dead stick trip a couple years ago and need to take another as I obviously didn’t learn as much from the guide as I had hoped. The guide was a great teacher, I as the student was not able to replicate what I learned.

Thanks again for the help and all of the information.

You'll get better and better at targeting each species. The key is know what you are looking at on the graph. I use down imaging and side imaging a lot to help me accurately identify what is white bass and what is hybrids based on the size of the returns and how they are oriented to each other. White bass are typically ontop of each other and hybrids are more spread out usually with bigger returns. Soon you'll be driving around going, "those are white bass right there" and a little bit later saying "those are hybrids over here" and be pretty darn accurate about it once you get to know your fish finder and develop your own method

Love my Grayline. If I could just be able to catch enough Shad to be able to use it all the time, it would be much better. LOL