On Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 55 (How 2 Tuesday #17), I show you how to keep your shrimp alive overnight so you can hit the water before the bait shop opens or save leftover bait for tomorrow. After years of killing shrimp in five gallon buckets, canals, and pumps that ran too hard or got too hot, I learned it comes down to a few simple things: oxygenate the water with an aerator and a weighted air stone, keep the container cool in the air conditioning, give the shrimp something to hold on to so they can rest, and never keep them in with pinfish or crabs.
Listen now: Spotify · Apple Podcasts · or press play in the player above.
The trick is to oxygenate the water without making the shrimp swim all night. I put a weighted air stone on the bottom of the container and run an aerator, then keep the whole thing inside in the air conditioning so the water stays cool. Just as important, I give the shrimp something to hold on to, like a piece of screen, so they can rest instead of swimming themselves to death.
You need an aerator, not heavy circulation. Shrimp do not need the water moving to survive, they need the whole water column oxygenated. A weighted air stone and an aerator do that. A pump that pushes water out and back in often creates too much flow, which forces the shrimp to swim all night until they tire out and die.
Hot water kills shrimp fast. My canal behind the house never worked because the water was too hot and there was not enough flow. Some pumps even put off their own heat and cooked the bait. I keep the container inside in the air conditioning so the water stays cool through the night.
You can keep a lot of shrimp in a five gallon bucket with about four gallons of water, as long as the air stone is all the way on the bottom and the water stays oxygenated and cool. Crowding too many shrimp into too small a space causes problems, so give them enough water and make sure the aeration reaches the entire column.
Two setups work for me. The first is an AC aerator from an aquarium store with a big air stone, kept inside in the air conditioning, with something for the shrimp to grab. The second is the Frabill Magnum Bait Station, a cooler with a built-in aerator on top and an interior net the shrimp can hold on to, which solves most of the common problems at once.
The biggest mistakes are too much flow, water that gets too hot, a dead battery on a splashed aerator, and nothing for the shrimp to hold on to. Keeping shrimp with the wrong bait is another one. Pinfish will pick at them all night and kill them, and crabs do the same, so I never keep shrimp in with either.
Here is the overnight setup I use to bring my shrimp home alive.
I walk through every one of these, with the stories of what I got wrong first, in the episode. Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page.
It does not seem like keeping a few shrimp alive should be hard, but I struggled with it for a long time. I tried five gallon buckets, water circulation setups, even keeping the shrimp in the canal behind my house, and they kept dying on me. The reason surprised me once I figured it out, and it changed how I think about keeping any live bait. I lay out exactly what was going wrong in the episode, so press play in the player above.
Oxygen, temperature, and space get all the attention when people talk about keeping bait alive, and they matter. There is a fourth factor that I missed for years, and it made the biggest difference of all once I caught it. It has everything to do with what the shrimp are doing all night when nobody is watching the bucket. I explain it in full on the episode, and it is the kind of thing you will not forget once you hear it.
For years I built my own rigs, screens around buckets, every aerator I could find, even pure welding oxygen with a giant air stone that I had to keep getting refilled. It worked, but it was never ideal. The Frabill Magnum Bait Station took every one of those headaches off my plate, and I have been impressed with it. I walk through why it works so well in the episode, so press play in the player above.
This is one of those practical answers I wish someone had handed me when I was starting out in the Keys. I burned through a lot of shrimp and a lot of money before I understood that it comes down to oxygen, cool water, rest, and keeping the wrong bait out of the bucket.
The bait shop keeps shrimp alive for days, so there is no reason you cannot do the same thing at home. Send me your questions at podcast@saltwaterexperience.com and press play in the player above.
Frabill Magnum Bait Station · aerator and air stone · AC aerator from an aquarium store · five gallon bucket setup · welding oxygen rig · live shrimp · pinfish · crabs · bonefish · tarpon · Florida Keys · How 2 Tuesday · Saltwater Experience
How 2 Tuesday is my weekly series where I break down one fishing skill at a time, from knots and casting to gear, tactics, and the habits that make you a better angler. Watch and listen to every How 2 Tuesday episode from Tom Rowland.
I'm Tom Rowland, a professional fishing guide based in the Florida Keys, host of the Tom Rowland Podcast, and the longtime host of the Saltwater Experience television show. On the podcast's How 2 Tuesday series I answer listener questions and break down one practical skill at a time, from bait and gear to technique and the habits that put more fish in the boat, in short, focused episodes you can put to use right away.
Tom Rowland Podcast — Episode 55: How to Keep Shrimp Alive Overnight
In this episode: why shrimp die overnight, the treadmill problem with circulating pumps, keeping the air stone all the way on the bottom, giving them something to hang on to, the magnum bait station, and why you never keep shrimp with pinfish or crabs — in the exact words spoken.
Tom Rowland: Welcome to the podcast today.
I'm Tom Rowland, and this is How To Tuesday this week.
This week, we're gonna answer a question.
Got a question on the email, podcast@saltwaterexperience.com, and, happy to answer those questions.
In fact, it gives us a lot of great content for this show.
So if you have questions about how to do something or, maybe maybe just something that you feel that would be a good, topic for this how to Tuesday podcast or a longer podcast, shoot me an email at podcast@saltwaterexperience.com.
This week, I'm gonna answer this one question that I've gotten many, many times.
In the Florida Keys, we use live shrimp and live crabs often.
Other places use live shrimp and live crabs often.
This gentleman and many others have asked me, how do you keep shrimp alive overnight?
Okay.
Tom Rowland: Why would you even need to keep shrimp over alive overnight?
You wanna do that if you're gonna go out before the bait shop opens or you have shrimp leftover from today and you're trying to save it for tomorrow.
Now, we make a stop at the bait shop pretty much every day, but if we wanna get out there really early, before the bait shop opens and we wanna be fishing for tailing bonefish or tarpon or whatever, we wanna we wanna be able to take our shrimp and keep them overnight.
Tom Rowland: I struggled with this for a while.
It doesn't seem like it'd be that hard, but here's the key.
The shrimp needs to rest.
So there are certain, pumps that you can use, And when I was first starting to try to figure out this challenge of how to keep bait alive overnight, got a tournament that's gonna start really early in the morning.
Don't we we don't have the luxury of going to the bait shop in the morning and, and and picking shrimp then.
We have to have it the night before, and it has to be ready to roll that morning.
Tom Rowland: So in doing this, I tried five gallon buckets.
I tried, you know, some sort of, something that would circulate the water.
I tried keeping the shrimp in my canal behind the house.
There's not enough flow there.
They would die.
The water was often too hot.
So I would start to keep them inside, and the air conditioning definitely helped.
But some of these pumps would actually heat the water up.
The pump put off some heat itself, and the water would get extremely hot and then end up killing the bait.
Tom Rowland: The other thing that happens is if you have a pump that is pumping the water out and then back in, sometimes the flow is too much for the shrimp, and they are just having to swim all night long.
So imagine that somebody was trying to keep you alive and put you on a treadmill, and you had to keep running all night long.
Well, sooner or later, you know, you're gonna get tired, and the weak ones are gonna start dying, and maybe the super athletes can make it, overnight, but even those guys are gonna die.
Tom Rowland: So two things need to happen.
You gotta get oxygen into the water.
So you can do that in many different ways.
Probably, the most effective way for shrimp is with a bubbler, an aerator, and these come in lots of shapes and sizes.
You need a stone on the bottom of your shrimp tank and you need an aerator.
These are usually battery operated.
You can go to aquarium stores, and you can get ones that are AC.
You don't have to worry about the batteries dying, and that will solve your problem.
Tom Rowland: You don't need the water to be circulating for shrimp to stay alive.
What you need is to oxygenate the entire water column.
So a stone with a weight on it, like a lead weight that takes the stone to the bottom, and an aerator will keep your shrimp alive.
Sometimes, you'll have a problem with shrimp dying even in that situation.
If the water gets really hot for whatever reason, so you wanna keep them inside in the air conditioning, and you also want something that the shrimp can hang on to.
Because, again, if they are trying to swim all night long, they're just gonna die.
They're they're just not gonna make it.
Tom Rowland: So if you have something that they can hold on to, a piece of screen, something around the edge, that is the best way to keep them alive.
So in the air conditioning with an aerator and something for the shrimp to hang on to, then you wanna think about, well, how much water do I need?
Tom Rowland: And if you're trying to keep too many shrimp in in in too small of a place, then you're gonna run into problems.
So if you have a five gallon bucket filled, you know, you got four four gallons in a five gallon bucket, you can keep a lot of shrimp in there.
But, you know, you want to make sure that that that one air stone is all the way on the bottom.
Tom Rowland: Now, I had I used to make my own things.
I used to put a screen around a five gallon bucket, and I used to have all these different aerators.
They even had oxygen, pure welding oxygen, and a giant air stone, and that definitely works.
But I would have to go back and get the oxygen filled at the welding station.
And, you know, it it definitely works, but it's not in not always ideal.
Tom Rowland: There's a new product that came out, and, it's the Frable.
They came out with this thing, and it looks like a cooler.
It's called the Magnum Bait Station, and this thing is really great.
They they took all the suggestions that people have given them.
It has a a little net that is that fits in there, and so all the bait is in this net.
It can hold on to the side of the net, and it can, just hold on so it doesn't have to swim all night.
This thing is a cooler, so it keeps the water nice and cool, and it has an aerator built in.
One of the problems with an aerator is that oftentimes, you're sloshing the water around out of the bucket.
It goes and gets all over your aerator.
You don't necessarily know it.
The battery start to corrode.
Sometime during the night, it just stops and dies.
In this situation, the aerator is on the top of the of the, bait station, the little cooler thing, and it's a very good product.
I've been very impressed with it.
We have one of these.
So if I come in in the night and I, have shrimp left over, I can just put it in this thing, put it in the air conditioning, and the shrimp is going to be alive in the morning.
Tom Rowland: I also try to not to keep shrimp with any other kinds of bait.
Pinfish will definitely be picking at the shrimp all night long, and they'll kill them.
So don't ever keep them with pinfish, and, so don't keep them with crabs.
Crabs are also picking at them and trying to eat them, so you you don't want that.
If you want your shrimp to stay alive, use an aerator, keep the make sure the stone is at the bottom, make sure you got fresh batteries, you don't get any salt water on your aerator, or get something like this new Magnum bait station from Frable, and that thing will help you to keep your shrimp alive.
Tom Rowland: And it'll probably pay for itself pretty pretty quickly as you, you know, you bring in you go buy $30 worth of shrimp at the at the bait station.
You come back with almost all of it, And most people just kill it that night and have to go get $30 more shrimp the next day.
So if you're able to keep that for several days or even a week, the baits the the bait store can do it.
Why can't you do it?
If you do it like this, you will be able to do it.
So the Frable Bait Station is a good one, or go to the aquarium store, get yourself a AC aerator, a big air stone, and, you know, you're gonna be able to keep it alive.
Make sure they got something to hang on to, though.
That's a big factor.
Alright.
That's how to keep shrimp alive overnight.
How to Tuesday for this week.
See you.
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