Don't do all your eggs in chem cures - which Kings like - do some steelie fishing specific cures too. >>>

Try soaking small nickle+ sized egg clusters for fishing steelhead into a large bowl of a mixture of Pautzke's Nector (red) and a little quality shrimp oil and anise oil stirred in. Soak them for about a half hour then drain off the eggs in a strainer over another collecting bowl. Save this brine in the fridge up to a week to use again on more incoming eggs, or in the freezer if longer than that. You can use this mix about 3 times, then discard it and make a new brine starting with the next batch of eggs. Put these soaked then drained eggs on paper towells to get off the excess moisture and then put them on a rack, or more dry non-inked paper towells, to dry for a few hours until tacky; but not too hard. Then gently shake them in a sack with plain white borax. Vacu-seal them in jars or pack them in extra borax before freezing, to keep them from freezer burn. This winter, when you do this cure with hatchery caught steelhead eggs, fridge the ones you will use within a week and freeze the rest for later. ...

Since steelhead aren't as fond of chems as chinooks, and borax firms up eggs well for fast water use, any good borax cure of properly handled quality eggs is usually good for fishing steelies. The ol' cherry Jello and borax combo is still good, as is just plain borax. ... If you run out of these eggs, keep in mind that steelhead will take eggs you have chem cured for salmon fishing since most steelie fishing is in faster water where the fish don't have much time to really sniff out eggs, as salmon often do in deep slower holes. Just thaw some out and cut them into the smaller clusters and lightly dust in borax (or no borax ).

RT

RT, Do you ever add non-iodized salt to your borax cure? I was told to add a level teaspoon of salt, to each cup of borax, for smaller eggs like silver or mature steelhead eggs and to use a heaping teaspoon for larger chinook eggs. I think the salt helps dehydrate the eggs. Seems to work well in the fast water for summer steelhead. I'd love to get my hands on some nice large chinook eggs to cure.

Steel, yes I do. But I keep it very little like you, because using much more than that can cause the eggs to milk out into the borax and stay there, so less egg juice to milk out when fishing them; and gooey borax on your eggs when out fishing. Same with sugar. I sometimes put a very small amount of sugar into the borax, but many guys aren't aware that too much sugar can also make eggs milk out. Steelhead do seem to have somewhat of a sweet tooth also, but not as much as salmon do - or I do for that matter. The sugar also acts as a natural color stabilizer. If you want to put more salt and sugar on your steelhead fishing eggs, which is fine if not a big amount, then let them juice out in a container and reabsorb for a couple days in the fridge, as you would do with chem cured 'nook fishing eggs. Then toughen them for fast water use with some air drying time and then borax.

RT