I can't fish with live fish and I doubt I can get most panfish to take a 3.25" nose to tail crawdad which is legal size here so I have to improvise.

I want to take minnows, peamouth clubs and crawdads and preserve them. The crawdad meat I think I have a good idea but I have no idea how to preserve fresh fish for bait. I even thought of buying goldfish and preserving them or maybe guppies.

Can anyone help? I tried a search but only found links for large fish like herring which I have done and I'm pretty sure a tiny 2" fish won't hold up through the process, but I may be wrong.

( wasn't sure which forum to put this in)