Hi Chix, There is something about freezing them as soon as possible after netting them and packing them in the yellow corn meal. I have frozen minnows in my freezer that have been there for 3 years , just used some of them yesterday by the green can just west of the Catawba state park boat ramp. We caught our limit of nice sized perch, I have to say freezing them this way does something to them that makes them even more appealing to the perch than live ones, maybe the corn meal smells good to the perch but it really works. I really believe that all fish use all of their senses to find their food.
We can go down into really turbid water and with our puny human eyesight and we can't see objects less than a foot away. I have been fishing most of my 74 years for several species of fish, I love Bass, walleye, sauger, perch or crappies. I have fished for striped bass and their hybrids, bluegills, sunfish and several species of salt water fish. Color, noise, motion, smell all affect how a fish reacts to what ever we are using to catch them with but I believe smell is the most potent for fish. I am a believer in the power of a fishes sense of smell so much so that I use a scent mask like bait mate to mask the smell of my human scent. The oils in your skin contain pheromones and things that fish can pick up very well. I spray my lures with bait mate and rub some of it on my hands; I am sure it provides a little edge that will make me more successful at catching fish.
Back to the recipe for freezing the emeralds in yellow corn meal. You can freeze your unused live bait this way or go to the jetties and even some streams like old woman's creek where emeralds come into in the fall probably to spawn and or to find warmer water. I use an umbrella net to catch mine in the old ore docks around black river in Lorain. There are times that there are so many minnows that you can't fail to net tons of them, then freeze them in yellow corn meal after blotting as much water off of them as you can. I use zip lock heavy duty freezer bags, the ones that have a little plastic zipper on them, and you have to use yellow corn meal (Aunt Jemima is the one I use)! I can not take credit for the yellow corn meal recipe, my brother Roger and I picked this up from an old salt that we used to go perching with. He has hardly ever bought live emeralds, even if he did he would freeze his unused live ones for the next fishing trip.
One suggestion I have is if you are going to catch a large number of bait fish for freezing buy a live bait certificate for about $40 so you don't have any issue with possession limits, Ohio limits our possession to no more that 500 minnows without that certificate. Lastly I know perch can be really light biters but most of my fish yesterday hit very hard so there was no problem knowing there was a fish on the line. I won't be buying minnows at the current high prices as long as I am able to catch my own and pack them away for the perch bite. Yellow perch love them when cared for this way, they last in the freezer for years. I refroze our unused bait after we got home to use for another trip. Best of luck to you in your fishing, tight lines my friend!