margie there is a post in bait and bait recipes section titled "keep shad alive" that has a ton of good info in it. I dont know how to put up a link to  get you directly there but i see bob had a post in it i a little while back. ill copy my post in it for you here in case you cant find it. good luck and keep rippinn their lips off!!
well at procats camp this year this is on of the specific things that I wanted to try to get more info on because i knew that some of the good flatheadders around here were catching flatties on live shad. as we have already talked about keeping them alive is the TOUGH part which until this weekend i couldnt due either. the sad part was is that i didnt realize how simple it really was. yes thats correct i said easy!!  If you aready have your cooler with the aerator in it then your already half way there. the only other thing you need is a good old five gallon bucket. fill your bucket with he water that they are coming out of. fill your cooler with the same. im not sure what size you all catch in your parts of the woods but were getting shad from 3" all the way up to about 12-14". the small delicate 3-4 inchers wont live very well but we were getting 6-8 inchers on sunday. they tend to be a little more hearty and can handle the stress better. Once you get some caught put 10 to 15 of the bigger ones in your five gallon bucket of water. the reason its so easy to kill them is because they puke and the belly acid in the water after they puke is what actually does them in. So when you get your 10-15 in the bucket leave them there for 5-10 minutes and keep a CLOSE eye on them. now im sure everyone has seen the water get dirty shortly after you throw them in your live well and this is what is happening. You can see the water almost turn "slimey" (for lack of a better descriptor) and the water needs to be changed on them and change ALL OF THE WATER not just some of it. to do this obviously youll have to move them to the cooler for a minute or take two buckets to swap them back and forth while your getting new water. after a couple of water changes (10-15 minutes) put your 10-15 baits in the cooler. DONT put to many in your cooler or you'll kill them all in a hurry. if you notice the water is getting a little "gooy" in the cooler after awhile use your five gallon bucket and get most of the water out and add fresh. We caught some on sunday at 1:45 pm and did this with them. I had about 15-20 baits in my cheap walmart styrofoam cooler (that is rectangular) with a battery operated aerator in it. we used several baits throughout the day. I also would pull out the ones that did die (which was minnimal) and had some great freash cut bait. When i backed the boat into the garage and cleaned it up it was shortly after 10 pm and 7 of the 9 baits still in the cooler were still swiming lively. The 2 other ones were swimming on their sides but were still alive. Im sure the lid blowing off on the way home and the aerator coming out didnt help their matter any. What im trying to get across is with a little work when you catch them is that it can be done as i found out on sunday keeping them alive for over 8 hours with a bucket,a cheap cooler, and 5 dollar aerator. I purchased a 48 qt wallyworld cooler yesterday for a whopping 13 bucks and will have fresh lively baits from now on!!! I hope this helps a few others scratching their heads as i was until nowabout keeping these little critter alive!and i gotta thank cattmatt and tim for the help and insight on this one!!!

doug couldnt get the link to work?