There's nothing worse for any fishermen than to get
up at 4 in the morning to go Striper fishing, only to find that all those
big ol' Shad that you worked so hard to catch the night before, are now
in a pile, spinning around and around in the bottom of your new $500 bait
tank. Just starts the whole day off wrong. No bait! After all that time
you spent throwing your net, DEAD SHAD! Well, you learn the hard way sometimes.
I've killed bait with the best of em! Along that trail of death I've learned
a few things that I'd like to share.
Aeration and Current
You need to keep your bait swimming. A shad
has to be about the dumbest animal alive. If you put them in a cooler that
has corners, they will swim to the corners, push their noses in it
until they use up the oxygen in that corner and die. Moms ol' red cooler
out in the garage does not make the best bait tank. You'll need a round
or oval tank with a pump to circulate the water. Swimming in a circular
motion helps the shad pull oxygen through their gills.
Filters
You should have some kind of water filtration system
installed. All those scales and particles floating around are a little
hard to breath through. Your bait tank may have a built-in filter and those
work great. My tank didn't have a filter so I use a "whole house" water
filter I got at the hardware store. (You'll find that a lot of my boat
parts came from there.) I use a replaceable paper filter that I clean
as needed. When it gets too bad I trash it. They last quite a long time
and are not a whole lot of money compared to the current cost of gas at
the pumps!
Cool bait is better bait!
I have read that if you keep your bait cool in the
summer it will last longer because cool water holds more oxygen than warmer
water so the bait will not stress as much. Hummmm... Seems like a bag of
ice might do the trick! With confidence in my new found information, in
goes the ice. Not a bad idea. I added the ice to the tank slow so that
the temperature didn't drop too fast. I'd even bought a second temperature
probe for the fish finder so that I could keep an eye on my progress right
down to the tenth of a degree. Now those shad would "have to last the night"
I thought. Well the next morning, you guessed it, dead shad. After all
that ice, my new temperature probe and all! How could this be? I was puzzled!
Then a wise old Striper fishermen told me about "chlorine". You know, that
stuff in city water that they use to clean the bacteria from the water
before you drink it. Works real good to kill shad too! It's in the ice!
I was chlorinating them! It never occurred to me. "Chlorine in the ice".
That's the same as bleach. I'd never put bleach in the tank!!! The answer
to this problem is to add "chlorine remover" to the water before you add
the ice. About any pet shop sells it. Another way to solve this is to forget
the ice. Most lakes have all the cool water you need right there for the
taking. It's about 35 feet below the surface. Right below the Thermoclime.
In the summer when I need cooler water for my tank I take along a garden
hose that I attach to a pump that brings the water up from below the thermoclime.
No chlorine! No ice! Just cool water that is right out of the lake anytime
I want it! Free! You want to have a bait tank that is insulated to help
retain the temperature.
What else goes wrong with the water?
Here's a bad word: "Ammonia"! Ammonia is
produced by the shad when they deposit their "waste" in you bait tank.
Water changes will prevent this build up. If you can't change the water,
pet shops sell a product called "ammoniasorb". It seems to help the bait
by absorbing some of the ammonia out of the water that would otherwise
build up in your tank. It looks like little white gravel chips. I put a
scoop of it in a cloth bag and rinse it in the lake a dip or two to remove
the powder that covers it. The bag I use is made to put in your washing
machine to hold little items you might wash and the washing machine would
eat if not for the bag. (I don't know where you can get one. You'd have
to ask someone who does laundry and this is not me!) There's also a product
called "foam off". Foam is caused by ammonia in the tank. You want the
water in your tank to mix with the air above it. If there is foam floating
on the top of the water it will prevent the air from transferring oxygen
to the water. If you see lots of foam, change the water! "Clean water is
good water". Too much ammonia build up will kill your bait.
A little salt anyone?
Adding salt to the water will help by hardening
the scales on the shad. Don't go crazy with it. I add about a cup to 25
to 30 gallons. I've been buying water softener salt that is in pellet form.
Make sure to read the bag and get as pure of salt as you can. Don't worry
that the best salt is two dollars more a bag than the other stuff. One
of those big bags last forever.
These few little "tricks" will help you keep your bait frisky. You want the best bait that you can get hanging on that hook you put down. A half dead shad just will not do it. You want to have healthy, happy, shad in your tank which in turn will result in great fishing!