An excerp from The REEL TRUTH book (custom curing and rigging for prawns):

While the coastal native steelhead season is underway the Columbia & Willamette River springer runs are coming up soon (with the coastal springers a few weeks away).- Properly cured prawns are perhaps the most affective overall bait on the lower Columbia R. and Willamette R. from the Oregon City area on down (of course if you can get the squawfish to leave your eggs/shrimp alone they're right in there and herring are excellant as well). That area is where red prawns are most often used though. However, they have a much broader affective use range than most fishermen are aware. They are excellant in both coastal tidewater and above for springers, fall chinook, and steelhead; the taiils only are great for steelhead too. They are great backtrolled with a custom hookup in large rivers such as the Clackamas, Cowlitz, & Skagit (rigup to follow). - Curing: Order a large box of uncured Marcy brand frozen cooked whole prawns (available at some seafood stores or bait dealers). I cure these 2 ways, as I do sardine filets. 1st; if you have enough juice left over from curing fall chinook eggs, simply soak the frozen prawns in it for a couple hours. If you have a good redish egg cure this is absolutely the deadliest! Refreeze them in ziplocks or small jars. ... 2nd way; cure them in a brine made with a gallon of distilled water combined with 1/2 cup Pro-Glo Red (or Orange or combo) coloring powder (not cure), 1/2 cup sodium sulfite, 1 cup non-iodized salt, and 3 T. MSG. This is a little weaker brine than for eggs, because they have already been cooked in water lightly salted. Soak them for an hour to several hours. Shorter soaks with just a pinkish color is good for clear water on Willamette and Columbia tributaries and the coastal rivers. Longer soaks with a bright red color is good for the colored Willamette and Columbia; but the lighter pinks ones will work out there too. Drain & pad them with paper towells before freezing. - Guides Choice or CCB brand cured prawns are good alternatives. Try the prawns as is or try the usual array of WD40, injected bait oils, or sprinkled nitrates for variants. ....

The most common rig-up for backtrolling, backbouncing, or anchored fishing with prawns in large river currents (such as Willamette @ O.C.) is to use a prawn threader, available at tackle shops, to thread a long 20 lb., 4/0 hook/leader thru the entire prawn body head first; thus fished head downstream. This is also effective for slower water forward trolling; as are stock spinnerwire prawn rigs. However, I have a custom hookup that is more effective for most other conditions, other than backbouncing, with the head facing upstream (better action & the hood stays on)!. Buy or tie up double hook long leader rigs with a 4/0 lower hook & a 2/0 sliding upper hook tied on with dacron backing line. To rig: cut the lower half off all legs hanging under the front part of the prawn; leave all the filia (sp?) fully attached under the tail section. Take a 2" piece of thin wire or toothpick & nick a small notch on top of the head about 1/4th" back from the eyes. Then insert this wire into the first tailsection joint forward of the back fantail joint, straight forward into the prawn while holding it almost straight, very little bend and the fantail will curve downward a little. Then, with the hooks about 1 & a half to 2" apart, feed a loop of leader thru the upper hook eye; a bit challenging, so you may have to loosen the dacron a bit and retighten it. Curl the lower hook into the lower underside of the tail section. Curl the upper hookpoint right into the center of the face and out the underside near the front legs, leaving the hook eye and leader loop just barely sticking out the front of the face. After taking up the slack between hooks put the leader loop over the beak/head and very gently deslack snug it into the notch you nicked on top, to hold the head to the upper hook. This is the key for best action. You will usually have an excellant forward rolling action for trolling. To fine tune, pull the line between the 2 hooks closer for slightly more bend before looping, to slow troll in slacker currents. For more colored water use a spinner blade or 00 dodger at mid-leader as you would with herring. For backtrolling faster water with Jet Planer divers, such as on the Clackamas R. or rained raised coastal rivers, leave the hooks a bit further apart with a straighter body and just a slight curve of the back 2 tail sections. This still rolls faster in these stronger river currents but often outfishes backtolled sandshrimp! ... Prawns are also excellant variants for tidewater chinook fishing and upriver deep holes using floats. Use either the single hook prawn threader hookup (above) or hook it folded, as they come in the package, by feeding the hook thru from the outer mid-bend, then curlhook thru the underside. It works! Also, try trolling the above custom hookup for upper T-Bay springers, as an alternative to herring or spinners. - Steve Hanson (RT)




[This message has been edited by Reel Truth (edited 01-26-2001).]

A good tip RT . But a little old ... the springer on the What About Bob page from my high school days at Lake Oswego came on that very setup. That was 15 years ago

Where do you buy that particular brand and kind of cooked shrimp? Bait store or like the Grocery store?

Thanks... SS

Hey Bob, you sly ol' dog , from about 1981 I was the only boat fishermen on the Clackamas River using that rigup; including the Toman brother guides . When I was guiding everyday thru all May and first half of June there thru the 80's for springers I never saw any other guide or fishermen use it . I could have missed some though. Moot point anyway, because my thought was the significant thing is for your readers that weren't aware of these techs can now make use of it for the upcoming springer season, and other fisheries. I know some guides used chem egg cures before others even knew about them back in the 70's (I learned about them later ) , and most know about them these days, but myself and others still put up egg cure suggestions to help others improve their techs . ... Curious how many of you have used this tail down rolling rigup for trolling prawns for springers and backtrolling for steelhead? Thanks much guys. - RT

Ooops. I missed your Q Smolt Steve. ... Big seafood retailers, such as Seattle's Pike Street Market, have some boxes of the Marcy brand and other brands stored in their freezer. Or many of them will order a box for you. I've found that Marcy has the highest % of quality intact whole cooked prawns.



[This message has been edited by Reel Truth (edited 01-26-2001).]

red prawns do work and they can be fished drifting with eggs or under a bobber as well. last year i was fishing a Columbia trib for fall Chinook with five other gentlemen and three of them were consistently hooking up and had all gotten there limits by 9am and I still had not even a slightest slow down or wiggle on my bobber and they were using sand shrimp and egg combo I had bought some of the dyed prawns and walked back to my boat to get them. it took only one cast for me to get the take down with the prawns added and another 20 minutes to fill my tag for the day there were 2 other fellows also fishing the same hole with just the eggs and when I told them what I had just changed to and handed them the prawns they could not believe that was the difference beetween catching and fishing while I was readying the boat to continue my float for summer steelies they had landed 1 fish and were fighting another. I will never leave the house without dyed prawns again

I first learned about the red prawns in 1986 or so. Never was a big fan of them, though.

Parker

Hey Parker, I loved the "boot pic wars" you and Dustin (Saukit2em) put on our BB; funny! But I also noticed the 2 gorgeous nate pics too. Now you better get impressed with red & pink cured prawns/tails soon so your bud doesn't 'Sauk it to ya' . Also, you have heard of jigs, right? jk ... Smolt Steve, I edited into my second post above suggestions of where you can get good prawns to cure. ...Also, another tip is try fresh raw jumbo prawns tails fished under a float, as you would eggs for Kings. Try them with the shell on first and then peeled with a little pink yarn added. It works great but they are expensive. The ones you don't use fresh right away either cure &/or freeze them. - RT

[This message has been edited by Reel Truth (edited 01-26-2001).]

They've benn using those dyed prawns in S.E.Wash.on the Snake and Gran. Ron. as long as I can remember. You ever tried to dig sand shrimp on the banks of the Snake it can be really tough.

Justin, RT. Justin, not Dustin, but that's pretty close so no biggie. I know that those prawns work really well because I have a friend in Oregon that's been using them for years. He said that he first saw them used in the 80's by this guy that sounded just like you. I said that I knew of him and his moniker is RT and his name is Scott Hanford

"Yeah, that's him!"

I always liked the "learned on the fly" tips.

It was July 4, 1985 and I was fishing on the North Fork of the Lewis River. For whatever reason, raw crawdad tails were the hot ticket. You had to beat the fish away from your hook if you had a crawdad tail on it! Eggs, prawns, and sandshrimp were just not working.

Anyways, the local store(s) ran out of crawdads by the end of the 4th. You couldn't find a crawdad in a 25 mile radias of the North Fork. Needless to say, fishing suddenly died off.

The 5th rolled around with no crawdads again. As I was standing there not catching fish, I noticed that people were only using the crawdad tails and had thrown the crawdad bodies all over the place. So, being the bright teen-ager that I was, I collected a few day-old crawdad claws, ripped open the tiny shells, and proceeded to bait my hook with these tiny bits of meat.

Two casts later, I had my two chrome summer runs and was on my way home

The look on the other bankies faces was priceless! I never did tell anyone what I did to catch those fish. From what I heard later, not a single fish was caught that day at that location.

OBJigs: Was fishin' for crappie at the mouth of the Walla Walla a few years back (like 15 or so). Was using my trout gear with a crappie jig n' float. Remember the scene in the Movie Jaws where Jaws was towing around the buoys like they were not even there and Roy made the comment of "Think we needa bigger boat." That was the day I realized that steelhead do indeed like jigs. "Think I need a bigger fishing pole..."came out of my mouth as a 10+ lb. steelhead slammed my crappie jig on 2 lb. test line and kept on going up rver.....

Parker

Parker,

That was a pretty good story about the steelie eating the crappie jig. It was almost as funny as the time RT told me about when he went fishing for Carp with Hey_yall and a big carp came up and ate RT's float.

RT, could you go over that doughball recipe with us one more time? Also, I saw your picture on the Carp netork. Nice fish!

Speaking of carp ... that reminded me a a pic I had stashed away. Any north end fishermen recognize the fella with the fish??? The season at Reiter opens next week



You'd better not put that picture of me with a humpy Kent !!!!

[This message has been edited by Bob (edited 01-26-2001).]

OK 'Dustin', this 'just in' (hey, that was a typo) - you have not really fished until you experience the exhileration of taking carp on top water takes! So don't be givin' me any more of your carp . ... And give me a break Parker! You went and told everyone about craw tails man! Geez, waz up with that; going around posting about semi-secret fishing infooo ...ooooh, ah ... nevermind . jk. ....

BTW,I know prawn use has been around a long time. My Q was if any of you guys ever see the tail downstream "herring type roll' riggup; both for trolling slower big water and backtrolling faster water; that specific method, rather than the common head downstream methods? Also, part of my tech post is that this unusual way more often than not outfishes the usual way. As does the egg cure juice prawn curing; along with the other additives. So if any of you see this rigup often out there, post here where you see it. Thanks. Hope you all enjoy a better springer season than hatchery winter steelhead season. Take care. - RT

Well I guess we need to stop calling him ReiterRat and now ApartmentPondRat

...you better watch out though Bob, from what I hear he has something in the works for you.

------------------
Ryan S. Petzold
aka
Sparkey and/or Special

Bob,

You've hit on the very reason why I will not call Washington home for very much longer. I have such a hatred for carp, I can't stand to live in a state where they reside, let alone swim along my beloved steelhead.

DaveD

hey Dave D, I don't know where you are going to live, but unless it's Death CValley, you won't be able to get away from carp. They are in every state, and virtually every country in the world. That's a lot of bugle bass.

As for the Reiter Rat, is anyone interested in a picture of him proudly displaying a sculpin that munched his pink jig. He is also a closet "dark fish" lover. Every time I started to look for chromers, I would look around the bend in the river, and he's fishing for crusty chums in some stand still frog water. Whazzup with that?

Hey, Bob, ROTFLMAO! Expert advice from Buzz about how to catch duck s*** suckers. Change his name from RR to THE CARPINATOR. Hey, Rat, did you get that one on yer yella rod or did ya cane pole 'em?

Classic, I love it!

[This message has been edited by SAUKit2em (edited 01-29-2001).]

Hey Hawk,

As far as I know, they still don't thrive in AK, although as resilient as they are, and with as many bucket biologists as we have, I would not be surprised if some fisherman decides to send some up and use them for pike bait.

DaveD