Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Shad Transport

Lake Ray Roberts is only about seven miles from my pond and this time of year is full of catchable threadfin shad in the shallows around the boat docks. I am going to make an attempt at catching the shad with a throw net and transporting them to my pond. I am planning on adding salt to the transport water. Does anyone else have any suggestions on keeping them alive for the ten minute trip. They will probably be in the holding tank for at least thirty minutes before being put in the pond from the time of capture.

I think there is a product called Shad-keeper. You should be able to find it at Academy or Basspro.

Ice to cool the transport water of IF it would be getting hot.

James, make sure you have a round or oval transport tank - they'll beat themselves to death in corners of a square tank....
O2 would be better than bubbler aerator.
Talk to some of the Lake Texoma live bait guides - they know all the tricks.

Thanks George I was thinking of going to Texoma because of the higher numbers of shad but Texoma is thirty miles away and Ray Roberts is only seven. I will try to let you know if it was a success or a failure next weekend.

At one time Lusk posted a big thread about transporting shad. Get in touch with him.

We generally transport shad in a tank with 0.5% salt. The thought is to make the water close to the fish blood, so the shad don't have to use energy on osmoregulation (salt balance in the body).

I went looking on the internet and found the following links. They use a bit more salt than I mentioned, but explain their rationale. They also tell how much to use.

http://www.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/SALTTRANS.htm

http://aquanic.org/publicat/usda_rac/efs/srac/392fs.pdf

Be sure to use only salt (sodium chloride), and not the iodized version that we often use on the table. Non-iodized table salt or rock salt will work.

If they find Bob's link for you, I'm sure it will have more information.

Thanks for those links Dave. I have added salt to minnow buckets before but never knew exactly what benifit it was or how much to add.

Try this thread - it has Bob's comments. Use round containers.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...=true#Post25747

That is a huge amount of salt! I would never have thought it would be that much. My tank is 600 gallons and on that reccommendation it would need 36lbs. of salt. Do you use that much salt Dave? I was thinking one box of rock salt but that would not even be close.

James Bob rec. 3 lbs/100 gals. so it would be 18 lbs. You can buy the non-iodized slat at feed store they use it for cattle, etc. We use 2 lbs/100 gals. for most species. Also with such a short run it might just be worth trial and error may not need anything at all if you handle them tenderly and you have a low haul weight of say 50 lbs/shad. Good luck.

Trial and Error always works for me sometimes!

Like Greg mentioned, I have always used the 0.5%, which is what his 18 lbs is based on, I believe.

The shad just are sensitive critters. Handle as little and as quickly as possible. Try to do at a time when water temps are similar at the source water body, in the hauling tank, and in the receiving water.

Then cross your fingers.

Sorry but I have to ask a side question

If you cast net a Tshad out of your pond and put him right on a hook, how long will he last as live bait? I would assume people with ponds that have Tshad use them as live bait...
If you wanted a hard day of fishing would you capture 50 or so shad the night before and put salt in a aerator tank and let them set over night (would this even make them last longer on the hook?)

Speaking from personal experience, hauling 2.5 tons of water can get a little hairy. It's worse than hauling 5 steers in a trailer without dividers.

jake I have never been able to get shad to live overnight in a tank. Shad are the most fragile bait I have ever used and everything in the pond wants to eat them. If fish have a choice of food they will always choose shad first over anything else. Ryan I agree about the hauling of water. I have a trailer that I haul the cattle tank in. It is a heavy duty dump trailer made for hualing dirt and gravel. It has heavy duty tires and brakes but I still have a flat, I guess from the weight about half the time. I now carry a speed jack and a spare everytime I go out.

Are shad eggs available? Shad are kinda broadcast spawners, don't attend their eggs but are still very successful (speaking about personal experience with Gizzard not threadfin). It seems eggs would be a whole lot easier to transport and you could just seed the pond with them. I don't have any idea how you'd go about getting the eggs, just a thought.

Ryan this thread has a discussion of shad egg transport.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...=true#Post25747

For some reason the link didn't work but I think this is it
http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...=true#Post25747

Lots of good info. I liked the idea of caging them for protection and letting them spawn. Would probably work best with horizontal aeration nearby to keep the food flowing.

When are one of the great minds on here going to develop a dwarf gizzard shad so us Northerns can have shad that don't grow too big too fast?

Will someone i.d. these two shad. Is one a gizzard and the other a threadfin?The third is a golden shiner right?

Can't tell for sure on the first one but it looks like a Threadfin. The second one is a Gizzard. You tell identify a Gizzard easily because they have a nose. This means that the top jaw is farther forward than the bottom Jaw. Third looks like a Golden Shiner.

Chris I netted these out of my pond today. I still haven't been able to stock any shad from the lake. I tried on Friday and never caught a single shad after throwing the net for two hours in four different places that I had seen the shad in the week before.

Chris is that any better?

Not really. In that picture it looks like a Gizzard(rounded nose) but in the first picture it looks like a Threadfin because the nose is pointed.

I think there is another way to tell the difference. I just need to find my I.D. book to make sure.