hornet wrote:

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Do you put on ice?
Do you let them sit in the bucket ?
Do you put them in water?
And for how long do they keep this way before cleaning/cooking  and eatting or cleaning/freezing?

Thanks Ken would hate to waste any

I do NOT ice them unless I am not cleaning for awhile...sometimes the next day.

On the water...I use only frozen 1/2 gallons bottles or quarts....you need to be able to show FWC your harvest, and if you have ice peppered in with the shrimp your picking them out for the FWC. So no icing on the river for me...you have to return back to port with the shrimp intact [not headless].

 If I need the room back I pull the bottles, once I get away from ramp, I stop and get ice.

When I get home, I have deep lobster pots, and I put my shrimp in the refrigerator, and then the next day I pop the heads. I rarely use ice...because I am a winter shrimper, and the cold air and bottles get me home....

In the summer, I would ice up on my way home [light layer on top if bottles are still embedded], but if you transfer to refrig the ice will be a pain...if your gonna leave them in cooler for awhile then ice up.

You can keep a bag un-frozen for eats safely 3 days.

I put my headless shrimp in quart ziplock or hefty freezer bags, I put 1.5 cups/headless shrimp in a  bag, sometimes 1 cup because I live alone for single portions, add water and freeze my shrimp in water. There is a section on this board in the classroom where I talk in more detail [to express air]

To thaw a water brick of ice, it takes 2 days...put in a pan, the tails of shrimp punctured bag as the water froze.

My freezer, has $4 plastic Walmart pans I load my bags laying flat into...I freeze them on cookies sheets to catch water during freezing and then transfer to plastic tub in freezer. If you do not do this, you will ice over your freezer drain and be doing the 1.5 hr take everything out and thaw drain drill.

newken wrote:

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I carry cube ice in a small cooler and after about half a pound (20 min) I add a few cubes just to cool the water.  and after every few min. i add some more ice . After I dock I add the rest of ice as in seafood market,  When I get home I rinse well, two/three times and put in freezer bag, head,tail and all, bags are dated for later info.  I have a freezer in the garage.

I pop the heads, sort by sizes, and fill a freezer ziplock quart bag with water, express out the air by dunking it in a deep pot of water, and zip it closed while under the water. This keeps my shrimp from getting freezer burn, and they last 2 years. The shrimp are frozen into a brick of ice.

Specialist! YOU got that right! Make the bricks, and they last! I then freeze them on a cookie sheet and then move them to a plastic dish pan to pack them so I do not have a sliding monument of shrimp bags in the freezer.

This year I am changing my system. I been buying plastic containers and want to put 1.5 cups of shrimp in a container, top it off with water and freeze. Then stack the containers in my freezer. They will be re-usable.They are 4 cup containers "M" size made by Ziploc and meant for the freezer.