Ok on the boat all I can suggest is make sure you have either a round or oval live well with a really good aerating pump. The cost of a high-flow pump that injects air into the system is the best thing you can do for your bait and in the long run will save you all sorts of green stuff far beyond what a poorly rigged live-well will kill in your live bait investment.

   We have all done it at one point or another... brought home some bait the night before and woke up to dead bait in the morning or had bait left over at the end of the day that we wanted to use the next day only to have it die over night.

 Freshwater guys, go to your favorite petstore, pick up a good air pump, a couple of airstones and some filter carbon - dump a small carton of the carbon in your water, add a couple of airstones and you should be more than fine for a couple of days at a time.

   Saltwater guys............

  Well if you are throwing 3 or 4000 greenbacks in a 20 gallon livewell, there is no hope for you - go read something else.

   The best thing you can do is treat them like the fish or shrimp they are. When it comes to shock there is no difference between your bait shrimp and the expensive shrimp you bought at the petstore for your tank. When it comes to Pinfish or greenies or whitebait - whatever they are no different than the expensive pretty fish in the pet store.... they are just as sensitive to shock too.

  Float them into your livewell - take them out of your fancy bait bucket and put them in an ice cream pail or a plastic bag (dont seal it). place said container in your live-well for 15 to 20 minutes in such a way that it floats. At the end of 15 or 20 minutes, add just a tiny bit of water from your livewell to the container at a time over 3 or 4 minutes until the container is submerged and you are able to get the container out of your livewell leaving your bait in it. This alone will mean the difference between 1/2 to 2/3 of your bait dying before you get to your favorite fishing hole in a couple of hours and almost none dying (depending on your live-well system)

   OK short of sticking one of the cheaper filters such as say a fluval canister filter there is not too much you can do right in your live-well. Personally, I have a line that comes apart and (before I cracked it) I put a Fluval 404 (no longer in production but there are newer models) inline with one of my livewells if it is going to be a couple of days before my cull catch is going back - I also drop in an airstone (6" bar type) attached to whatever air pump I have with the most oomph to it at the time, This is really effective and overnight will more than keep bait alive with just the airstone. With the filter added it is good for a week or so with very little die off.

      If you have a recycling live-well you can add in a pump that will aerate as well as move the water around. Yeah yeah I know it will kill your battery but instead of killing your bait, hook up an automatic battery charger to your boats battery so you can run the pump all night and still be able to start easily in the morning.

  If you frequently get bait at some particular place because it is cheaper and then have to go spend some time driving, put the boat in, all that happy crappy... Pay attention here - Add a real airstone to your system for the trip. There are battery powered units available for next to nothing these days but throw away the stone that comes with them and keep a couple of superfine bubble ceramic or wood airstones along to actually use. Saltwater you want the finest bubbles you can get and the strongest pump you can lay your hands on. Keep your boats livewell pump(s) recirculating while on the way too.

   If your boat is at the dock overnight and you have leftover bait, set your well to add new water in and hook up an automatic battery charger (if you do not already have one) so you dont kill your batteries - and make sure you have a really good quality pump in your live-well system.

   When you are running out, make sure you are flowing new water into your livewells at all times - make sure you switch to your spare battery whenever you stop (so you dont kill your engine start battery) leave your pump running while you are stopped - they do make automatic systems but so far none that I have pulled apart have turned out to be more than a timer, a rheostat/potentiometer and a relay (if the timer itself is not a timer/relay). These systems do indeed help but not nearly as well as just simply leaving the pump on.

  But I though they were sensitive to shock? Yes they are but running your pump or your intake scoop will not change the water temp quickly enough to send your fish/shrimp into shock as a general rule.

  OK so you have a dock and you are planning on going out in a week or so.... Use some common sense, pop a tank on your dock - old horse trough, barrel cut in 1/2 whatever you can lay your hands on. plotch in a 3 or 4 inch screened drain so your bait will not get out. Go down to Home Depot or lowes and get an inline, submersible mag drive pond/fountain pump that will move at bare minimum 1200 gallons per hour. The last one I rigged up for someone had 3/4" threads on the intake side and 3/4" threads on the outside. we will use it for an example in that it is very effective and costed under 70 bucks to make.

 Pump is a Pondmaster/Mag drive model 12 first thing I did was get a 3/4" male threaded to 2" pipe adapter. I drilled a whole bunch of 1/8" holes in 2 ft of  2"pvc pipe (bout 1/4" apart whole length) and put an end cap on one end of the pipe and stuck the other end into the adapter. - that covered my intake side. Exhaust side I went with a 3/4" female adapter to 1" pipe and plumbed it into the side of a cut in half barrel, above the waterline I desired. I cut an exhaust port about 5x7 in the opposite side and set the barrel to where the exhaust was blowing over the edge of the dock - placed a rubber square tray with one side cut out under it to ensure it would not drain onto and therefore rot the dock boards - cut out side was aimed over side of the dock.    Every baitshop, their brother and their dog is going to tell you this wont work. The reality is they are generally trying to keep thousands of shrimp or fish and subsequently think along those lines. These smaller, simpler systems will keep several dozen shrimp or fish alive for months if you properly feed them.

   What is the proper food for shrimps, pinfish, greenies or whatever? Regular Tetra Min flake food works excellent as does Prime reef brine shrimp plus. But be nice - these are generally wild fish and you have a syatem that is going to blow water through carrying a lot of the flakes with it. What we do is to stick a good palmful, into the water (yup grab food, close hand around it, put hand all the way to bottom of tank, release food and they will generally eat it). If someone tells you that pumping the water through alone will keep your bait alive - all I can say is that is highly likely they have never had a saltwater aquarium. I know 4 bait shops that do not feed and generally throw out more than 1/2 their stock every load. I know 1 bait shop that feeds just regular tetra min flake food and loses less than 1/8 of their stock per load.

  There are many other ways, there are many other methods, I do not claim any of mine are "THE" solution just that they are yet another set of methods that seem to work well for me.