# Better (smelling) frozen shrimp.



## captken (Feb 24, 2008)

Some shops sell rotten frozen shrimp, plain and simple. Freezing long dead shrimp stinks.(as a business practice) My son bought some from a local shop on New Years Day that were nasty smelling.

I freeze shrimp, fiddlers and sand fleas after dropping them into a very cold brine solution for a few minutes before freezing. Cold brine firms them up and kills bacteria that could start working on them as they thaw. This also works well with Cigar Minnows, Sardines, Bull Minnows and even Bonita strips. 

Even shrimp that have been dead a little long will usually be ok if you brine them.

Use Sea salt or non-iodized salt rather than iodized salt. Ice cream salt or plain softener salt works fine too.

Brined bait lasts longer and smells better.


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## L Hull (Jan 19, 2011)

I ran into that several times. I try to keep some frozen bait of my own. I had heard of blanching sand fleas in a salt brine. Didn't know about the cold brine, I'll give it a try. New Years I didn't have anything in my personal stocks so I went to fish market and bought my shrimp. Turned out they had fresh bait shrimp, even if they hadn't, it would have been better to pay a little more than fish with that rotten stuff.


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## Kevin B (Dec 3, 2012)

I read some where ?, that putting them in brine , toughens them up too, so the stay on the hook better ?.
I don't know if that is true or not ?, but that is what the article said.

Kevin


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