Lake Shiners - Emerald Shiners

This may save you a dollar or two, plus you will always have shiners. I started about five years ago to try to preserve shiners, I tried canning salt, rubbing alcohol, and a couple of other ways with not much luck. Then three years ago a friend gave me some shiners and told me to just shake the water off of them, put a days supply in a zip lock bag and freeze them. I did and it worked. Now they will get mushy so wife and I only get out a couple dozen at a time and keep the rest on ice. When they are mushy they still work you just don't get a second chance if you miss the bite, you have to rebate but hey they are free. We use a eight foot minnow seine throwing type and can usually put up enough minnows in a week to last all summer. We started keeping track of our perch catch five years ago and we have been over two thousand a year since we started counting so I am talking a few minnows. Oh we clean the fish ourselves and give most of them to friends and family, we have a lot of friends until the fish are gone. Hope this helps have a good season.

thanks for the advice on keeping minnows just in case your using a cast minnow net they are illegal to use in lake erie just a heads up on that! anyway i will be putting some in the freezer too. looks to be a great perch year

I just checked the Ohio rules, the way I read it, it states that minnow seine can be used inland 4x8 size between 4am and 9pm. on lake erie no size limit or time limit. and 500 minnows per fishing license. Check this if you can I certainly don't need to add any extra expense to my fishing. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Have a good season.