I recently caught a nice striper at PK on a dead shad that a sand bass puked up for me and it got me thinking I need to give live shad a try. I've caught them before, but they seem to die almost as soon as you catch them. Is there any way to turn my live well into a good shad tank? What are the do's and don'ts of keeping shad alive.

I watched this video, but it seems extreme to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cEn8CgO3tA

I'd appreciate any info.

Does your live well have round corners? That, along with size, is one of the biggest problems with attempting to convert a built-in tank into a good shad tank.

Actually, that is one of the best video's out there.. I have made a few video's myself, and believe James' video has some of the best information out there. I do everything (except keeping an extra bag of salt and chemicals available to start over) indicated in James video.

I throw a cup of stock salt and some Foam off in mine and have pretty good luck. The biggest killer that I can see is the water getting too hot in summer, and too cold in winter. In the summer, I just keep adding ice to it. In the winter, all i do is deadstick so I don't have to deal with it.

I think it's somewhat square. Not sure I have room for a huge tank. Do you think the little 5 gal buckets will work?

Thanks for the info.

Pk there is just no substitute for a good tank. If you can fit even a 11 gallon greyline in then go for that. Anything much smaller and home made is really just a waste of time, money and energy.

Just go to the greyline site and pick out something that fits your needs. I promise you that you will be better served doing that than going through all the steps that eventually lead up to purchasing a quality professionally manufactured tank.

By the way it looks like you got a beautiful place down on PK. My inlaws are in on a timeshare deal down there but we have never used it.

Keep after them and keep posting the pics and reports.

+1 on the grayline. Mine works great!

I agree that the greyline tanks are the best. Having said that, you can make a tank pretty cheap to see if you want to switch to shad. Your livewell may work if the corners are rounded or beveled, you can even insert something to round the corners out. Water quality, temp and oxygen are the trick. start with just a few shad and you can get by without a filtering system. All that being said if you have the extra funds go for Greyline and know it will work as good or better than anything else on the market.

+1 on getting a tank vs building one.

Its a 1-time investment. And one you will never regret. Most good homemade tanks end up costing over half as much as the real deal anyhow.

In winter months. You can keep a moderate amount of shad in your livewell. They wont be near the quality of bait from a good tank. But live shad nonetheless. In the summer. Not so much.

This reminded me of a great read that one of my friends, Tony Hughes wrote................

Why use salt?

The most effective use of salt in a freshwater baitwell is to relieve the effects of high nitrites due to tank crowding. Salt (the chloride ion specifically) reduces the amount of nitrite that takes the place of oxygen in the fish's blood (ever wonder why they're gasping for air if you don't change the water soon enough?). All those shad crowded together in a tank for hours at a time produce a lot of wastes, to the point where sometimes the water's so cloudy it's hard to even see the fish. The use of salt during bait holding (depending on season) has somewhere in the range of 90% better survival rate over holding bait without it.

Other common reasons given for it's use are stress relief and disease prevention, although the "stress relief" is most likely related to reduced nitrite uptake as explained above.

In a home holding tank a 1% or less concentration, (usually around a tablespoon per per 5 gallons of water volume) is a safe level for preventation from diseases and parasites. Salt concentration works by osmotic pressure/osmotic balance - a fancy term for the amount of salt and other ions (electrolytes) inside the cells of a fish compared to the amount outside. Salt can easily be expelled from a fish through the gills. So why, then, is there a consistantly higher concentration inside their bodies than outside for shad? All freshwater fish have specialized cells to help in gathering salt ions from the water. In fact, maintaining this salt balance makes up about 25-50% of the energy expended by a fish. Basically a fish is better adapted for taking in and using salt than are the diseases and parasites that infect them. Higher salt concentrations in bait tanks can also stimulate shad to produce an excessive slime coat (at too high concentrations, salt can be stressful and cause shad to get the "bends" when going from a highly salted tank to less salty lake or river).

A fish also uses the salt in other ways. The chloride ions, in addition to use to inhibit nitrite uptake are used in the production of hydrochloric acid - used for food digestion. Sodium ions are used for cell metabolism in a unique way, called "active transport". Not all materials can move freely into an animals' cells. Some require "help", and sodium ions are part of the help, particularly in the movement of potassium, which is used in fluid/electrolyte balance, muscle contraction, and nerve impulse conduction. This type of transport also occurs in humans, too.

How much salt in bait water? - depends on on the months shad are held, and how lively you need them to be - as a general rule ONE cup of 99% "PURE" salt per twenty gallons of water when water temps are 75 degrees or above - when water is cooler and shad are harder, you can get away with cutting that in half --be wary of any salt with additives such as stabilizers, anti-caking agents or iodine, it will kill your bait -

Water Temps - Shad netted from water warmer than 85 degrees are generally too soft to survive long without tempering the bait in salty water for an hour or longer. Shad will go into thermal shock and rapidly die with temperature changes over 8 degrees - so if you drop a shad from a too cold tank, down thru 15 feet of hot summer water, by the time they get to the fish holding level they are too shocked to attract attention -- Predator fish are like a junk yard dog - if the bait isn't lively and does not run from the predator, are not as likely to get bit --pay attention to surface water lake temps and don't lower you bait water temps more than ten degrees below this - In winter shad start to die off when water approaches 36 degrees. Threadfin first followed by Gizzards - which is WHY threadfin are not as abundant in Oklahoma.

Outgas of Ammonia ions - is probably the easiest and most overlooked part of shad holding - as part of tank crowding and shad waste(regurgitation and feces) AMMONIA builds up rapidly in a static closed system, you can do a water change but remember you will stress shad even more if you do so after you have added salt -- By itself in a natural system ammonia is removed due to wave and wind action and subsumption mixing of water - in a tank you can simulate this by adding an air pump and air stones - as a fine bubble rises in the water column of your tank, ammonia ions attach to the bubbles and as they burst on the surface ammonia is released

Filtering is necessary to keeping lively shad for a days fishing - any system that will remove fine scales, mud/feces/debris from the water will help

Agitation does not work nearly as well as a bubble stone in a tank - don't believe the claims that Aeration adds O2 to a crowded tank because its simply not true, it would take hours and no bait in the tank water to raise O2 levels, particularly since atmospheric content of O2 is only twenty percent of the aeration -Pure bottled O2 or conversion of hydrogen peroxide are the only way to raise O2 levels - you should't pour Hydrogen Peroxide into a tank already stocked with bait !!! -

Current in a tank is NOT necessary for gizzard shad, it does however help threadfin shad or skipjack herring - A very gentle current in a tank, flow it COUNTER Clockwise

BAIT SAVERS - ever wonder WHY commercial bait savers won't list their ingredients? Well just maybe they want to get your dollar - I've had several commercial concoctions chemically analyzed - MOSTLY the major ingredient is salt, and the food color of choice - but if they give you anymore confidence use them - just remember to cut your salt concentration accordingly --

Wow $300+. I'll need to add that to next years budget. I plan on focusing the first hour of every trip ( I'm retired so this is every decent day) to trying to catch and use shad.

Thanks for the info. It's appreciated.

4 weeks ago, I netted about 40 shad, 3-5 inch, placed them in a 30 Gal greyline tank, with the plan to go fishing the next day. The weather turned bad and to make a long story longer. I kept them alive for 13 days, went out fishing 2 times, shad were always lively, finally my battery charger (that was keeping the bait battery going) failed, they were still lively after 13 days. I used salt as directed, changed filters as needed. Used "better bait". The tank was in my boat in the garage. temperature hovered around 72-78. If you keep your bait cool, and don'y over croud the tank, they will last. The fact that they lived so long is a testament to the quality of the tank.