Anyone have a good frozen herring brine recipe? I'm used to using fresh bait kept on ice however I am going north in a few weeks to fish where there is no fresh bait. I need a recipe that will keep thawed previously frozen bait firm but not too dehydrated so that it wrinkles. I also heard somewhere that people add powdered milk with their brine, what's up with that? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Beezer

My brine is 1/2gal water, preferabally seawater but tap is O.K. Add a couple handfuls of rocksalt, handfull of powdered milk or couple drops of blue dye for shine. I like to put my herring in plugged but still frozen. and refrig overnight. After about a week in the brine the herring are really rubbery and get the wrinkles you talked about, but I havn't noticed any difference in effectivness for blackmouth, kings or silvers.

Pro Cure has a herring brine that they sell, I have never tried it maybe someone else on the board has?

http://www.pro-cure.com/catalog/sturgeon.html#brine

Beezer, I've always used 2 cups rock salt, 2 cups borax, and 1 cup powdered milk in 1/2 gal purifide water. I don,t like the clorine you'llget from your city tap water. ( the milk makes them nice and shiny.)I mix up the brine and place it in the refer over night so that the mix is really cold and then put the herring in for 2 days.Really toughens them up and are as bright as fresh herring. When I cut plug them, I throw the heads and guts right back in for added scent.

I bought some of the PRO-CURE bait blue, and it does put a good shine on your baits. The only drawback with the stuff is it will make anything it touches a nice shade of blue . I'll use up what I have and then go back to powdered milk.. no blue hands and it works just as well.

Gary-
The herring brine that HBP and craig harr are describing is awesome. The recipe that I use is slighty differnt from theirs though...

1 part rock salt to 1 powdered milk to 1 part borax. I usually fill up a small tupaware container with water and a couple dozen frozen herring (the day before) and use about 1 cup or so of each ingredident.

I have seen some pretty soft ugly bait harden up and start flashing like you would not believe.