I cured almost all of my fall salmon eggs in various chem cures to use for river salmon fishing. Of course steelhead will take these chem cured 'nook/'ho fishin eggs as are, but they usually have a slight preference for less chemmy eggs. That's why many good fishers add things to non-chemmed up borax cures or brine cures for steelhead specific egg fishing. Here's a couple suggestions for adapting 'nooks target chem eggs over to steelie target eggs. And afterward asking for other opinions on what you guys do, if anything, for this purpose. >

I thaw out a couple jars of eggs chem cured for salmon. I then prepare two different brines to put each jar of thawed eggs in to soak and chem dilute for a bit; and to have a little different cure put on them for steelhead. >

In bowl one I put in chilled red Pautzke's Nector, and stir in a little shrimp oil and anise oil. I cut the egg skeins into nickle+ sized clusters and soak them in this for 45 minutes to an hour. Then I drain them, dry them out for a few hours to toughed them for faster water use, and then shake them in a sack of white borax before re-jarring them. For the second brine I use the ice water feature on the fridge to half fill a large bowl with this very cold water. I add a couple spoons of Pro Glo red coloring crystals (not the cure) and disolve and mix real well. I them add some Crawfish oil with bite stimulants in it to this cold brine. Since there is no sodium in it, before I put the cut up egg clusters into this second brine I stir in ground up ice to make the water super cold. This keeps the egg sack pores fairly closed so they won't milk out in this chem diluting and coloring brine. Salt brines keep eggs from milking out, but in this case I am trying to de-chem the eggs without losing egg juices, and enhancing color and scent, so no salt. As with the other brine - soak/dry/borax. This has worked real well when I haven't gotten out to catch some hatchery steelhead hens for eggs to use. They are a very productive egg for steelies with this procedure - better than just using the chemmed up 'nook fishing eggs, in my opinion. ...

What do some of you guys do along these lines if you run short on steelie eggs?

RT

It sounds like a good idea and I will try it out. One thing your forgeting is the juice inside the eggs still will have some chemicals in them although less overall for the clusters. I don't kow about other guys but I don't have a problem hooking steelhead on Pro Cured eggs and such.

My partner and I catch alot of steelhead. I use pro cure red hot double stuff exclusively. Although after I cure the egg I borax them to toughen them up. My partner exclusively uses a borax/sugar brine(old school) on his eggs. It's nice because we always have two great but different eggs in the boat. Having said that the bottom line is that they both catch fish equally as well. I think the most important issue is taking care of your eggs before and during the curing process. Good fishing!!

Some of the top steelhead guides I know use sulfite-cured eggs, thereby pretty well de-bunking our old belief that pro-cured or sulfited eggs won't work as well on steelhead. I think that if you hit ol' Ike on the nose with pretty colored eggy stuff he tends to bite whether the eggs are chemically-cured or boraxed.

Firma, good point about the chems still being in the egg sacks. ... I should have clarified in my first post that it matters less in faster water applications, when I said "Of course steelhead will take these chem cured 'nook/'ho fishin eggs as are, but they usually have a slight preference for less chemmy eggs". The slight preference I have found is in the slower water areas when they have more time to smell the eggs. This would be in deep holes during low water for winter fish and float fishing eggs on the slower seams. But as Craig said, it's good to have more than one cure along in case the fish are more in the mood for one over the other. This is even more important for moody salmon.

RT