Salting shiners

I’ve been scouring the message boards on how to freeze shiners and am no closer to knowing how to do this successfully. One guy says just freeze them with nothing. Some use salt and freeze them. Some use salt and borax. One guy on here talked about freezing them in coke…might have to try that just because!!!

Does anyone have a definitive recipe on how to do this? Much appreciated.

I have used potato vodka with good success. I tried soaking/freezing a few dozen in a rum I had laying around. Hopefully the thicc females respond appropriately.

http://www.lakemichiganangler.com/tips/general/how_to_make_salted_minnows.htm

This method works very well

You can use whatever method you choose.
Personally i’d just freeze them.

Here’s the important part…

You only get to thaw them ONCE. Then they’ll get soft.

SO, freeze is small quantities and keep frozen until you decide you are going to use them and toss them out if not all used.

If you think you can find a method that will allow you to get your frozen shiners to luke warm temps, and then just re-freeze and get same quality, you’ll never achieve that.

Freeze em, thaw them slightly so they’re stiff when putting on the hook. Discard when done.

Depends on how many minnows you are salting. Put your minnows in a plastic bucket with water. Enough so they can still swim around a little. Dump a couple of cups of salt in the water. Let them sit until all the minnows are dead and soak for about 15 minutes. Take the minnows out, spread out on newspaper and tamp dry with paper towel. Then cover minnows with salt and let sit for 30 minutes. Rinse salt off and dry again with paper towel and cover with salt again for 30 minutes. Rinse, dry and then put into ziploc bags. Keep in the freezer until you use them. I’ve used them ice fishing and saved the unused ones and used them the next year.

Should be able to post Pat..

I do it pretty much the same as the method in Timmy’s link. I never freeze them because I think they get to soft and mushy. The fish can suck them off hooks to easily or they go flying when casting. I’ve kept them up to a year in my garage fridge with no problems. I do add 1 cup of borax to 2 cups of salt, I was told it helps preserve the color of the minnows.