Hey, I'm planing a week of camping and fishing. I will be away from freezers, etc. Only will have ice chests so how should I keep the fish caught near the first of the trip from going bad. I thought maybe putting some dry ice in along with regular ice. What do you do for a several day trip.

If you will be close to a convenience store to buy more ice, I would suggest keeping fillets in ziploc bags. Every day drain the water and add a bag of ice.

Not sure about the dry ice. If you use it, wrap it in a paper bag to keep the fish from freezer burn.

Wish I had better advice.

Gilly

I will go with Gilly. Fillet the fish and put small portions in ziploc freezer bags. Keep the bags packed on ice, and they should do fine. You might just leave the drain plug pulled on the chest to keep it drained. Add ice often.

My experience with dry ice is that it will not last a full week. You can certainly freeze your catch with it, but by the end of the week you may have a thaw. Unless you have a source of more dry ice nearby, just stick with keeping your catch packed in well drained ice.

Best thing to do is make sure you clean and rinse the fillets well...pack them in ziplock bags, and keep them iced. They'll be good to go for several days. Just make sure you rinse them off well. If you really want to freeze them, just pour rock salt in with the ice once you have the ziplocked bags in the cooler. The rock salt will really cool them down, and keep the ice frozen much longer.

Also...make sure you are not over your possession limit on fish The possession limit on freshwater fish in TX is twice the daily bag limit. So, if you are gone for 5-7 days, you can only have 2 days bag limit in your possession.

Have fun.

What Gilly and Duck Jerky said

We had to do this at Colorado Bend a few years back, worked just fine

Would not even mess with dry ice. The ice and salt combo works very well. Just keep in drained fairly well. You can really drop the temp way down that way.

That would be posession limit per fisherperson I believe. Correct?

Thanks for the great info, I'll do the rock salt deal.
On the limit deal, can you have a limit of say crappie, and a limit of catfish also, or is it just 1 limit total.

Two limits per species.

2 limits of catfish, 2 limits of crappie.

Have fun!

Just cook em up each night and be good to go! Gonna fry some ice cold white perch fillets tomorrow afternoon and watch the LSU game!

Slew

If you don't protect the coolers from raccoons you won't have to worry about how long the fish stays fresh. They can open a cooler in a flash.