I can normally catch threadfin shad but they die on me pretty quick. When planning on using them as cut bait should i put them on ice right away, or leave them floating in the bucket?

Ice them right away. It preverves the oils

they hold up better if they stay dry while on ice also ... i have a small cooler that i use just for bait & use an old pan or bowl to put the bait in

I'll catch them in a castnet, and place them immediately into a gallon zip lock bag.

I have a small ice chest about half full of crushed ice and then place the zip lock bag of shad on top, and use the shad right out of the cooler when I need to rebait.

They stay dry and fresh!

Thanks for the info, hopefully this will increase the number of fish hitting the hot grease.

iced down shad don't seem to be as good as cut from live shad after about 2 hours of being iced down ... I've done a lot of side by side studies on it and keeping them alive is always better. you can make you an aerator pump out of a bilge pump like the ones on my tips section and hook it up to a lawn mower battery or something and using the salt and one of those aerators you can keep them alive in a bucket quite a while as long as ya don't put over 30 or so in there of the threadfin ... use about 3/4 of a cup of salt per 5 gallon of water ... the kind mentioned on my tips section and then use a good bubble aerator or bilge pump aerator and they'll stay alive for a long time.

I was lucky enough to fish with Tiny back around Feb with a water temp of 39 degrees, his shad were still alive at the end of the day. He likely caught them the day before.