1. Always use a round bucket or something with rounded edges. Otherwise the shad get "red-nose" and die.
2. If possible use Shad Keeper. Its available at bass Pro Shops.
3. After you cast net shad, put them in a round bucket with cool clean water...no shad keeper. Allow them to swim around in that bucket for about 15 mins and then with a dip net, transfer them to the other clean bucket with Shad Keeper in it.(The reason you use two buckets is because shad will expel their stomach contents when first caught and it will keep your main bucket cleaner). Make sure that this bucket has lots of areation(I use the Bubble In A Box areators...2 per 5 gallon bucket) and the water is cool. If hot outside, I freeze bottles of water and use them like floating blocks of ice in the bucket.
4. If you dont care about keeping them alive, but want them fresh, layer the shad in a cooler with ice. Ex: Layer of ice, layer of shad, layer of ice, layer of shad, etc.
5. Areation and keeping the water cool are the main keys...do this and you will have lively shad.

Hope this helps a few out. These tips can also be used with creek chubs and skipjack.

Thanks for the tips I never knew about them throwing up in the bucket. I do always keep the water cool though and I do use alot of aeration and I also do use a round container (55 gallon oil drum).The thing is that I need to keep them for more than just a couple hours I like to bait fish on Thursday night and don't catfish till Friday or sat night.does that shad keeper stuff really work.

Matt you mentioned 55 gallon drums, one thing to consider is surface area in you bait tank.  A kids plastic swimming pool has much more surface area than say 55 gallon drum, thus the water in the large surface area will have more dissolved oxygen than say the 55 gallon drums. Thats an importand aspect.  Filtering and cleaning the filter regularly is also very important for long term keeping of bait.  Amonia can also be removed using aquatic plants---its fertilizer for them,,the plants asborb the amonia and give off oxygen at night and carbon dioxide during the day. 

For anyone wanting to keep large numbers of bait, I would reccomend that you look into building a landscaping pond of 1500 to 2000 gallons and outfit it as thou you were keeping Koi or Goldfish.  Done right they are attractive and require very little maintenance