Keeping Bait?

[McQ]

For those of you who fish with live bate. If you do not have a bait tank, do keep the bait in the livewell of your boat or use some other means? I am mostly talking about shiners, but if anyone has a trick for keeping shad......

You do need a round tank, bait will swim against flow and not kill themselves running into the corners. A constant re circulating flow is the best around 500 GPH for 20 gal., the scales will stay in a pile right in the center ( try not to get them floating through the tank, will get in bait gills and choke them ) Do have some sort of large drain cover, a cylinder type of screen, or a small plastic water bottle drilled with a lot of holes, so dead bait can not clog and overflow tank... you should have an automatic float type bilge, because we have flooded our boat !
Keep the tank covered, out of the sunlight, and gently remove dead bait, they will kill the live ones over time.
With all that said, if you can keep Shad (alewives) alive, you will put a lot of fish in the boat.... Good Luck

[riverrat12]

You do need a round tank, bait will swim against flow and not kill themselves running into the corners. A constant re circulating flow is the best around 500 GPH for 20 gal., the scales will stay in a pile right in the center ( try not to get them floating through the tank, will get in bait gills and choke them ) Do have some sort of large drain cover, a cylinder type of screen, or a small plastic water bottle drilled with a lot of holes, so dead bait can not clog and overflow tank... you should have an automatic float type bilge, because we have flooded our boat !
Keep the tank covered, out of the sunlight, and gently remove dead bait, they will kill the live ones over time.
With all that said, if you can keep Shad (alewives) alive, you will put a lot of fish in the boat.... Good Luck

Very good advice....put this in the ground and put a lid on it and you got a bait holder...chuck