Hey Geo, heres the trick - kill your herring in an iced salt brine as you take them off the jig, take them right out of the brine as soon as you get home and lay them on cookie sheets, freeze them for an hour or two until they are fairly hard, vacpac them, and then freeze them the rest of the way. These baits will outperform all but the best Ballard Bait, and I have kept some for over a year that still worked just fine. The whole trick is to superchill them with the iced brine and never let them get above 32 degrees during the whole processing scenario - that way no belly burn.