Could anyone tell me how to dye herring?? I would like to try a couple differant colors.
I was thinking food color in a brine.Or maybe jello but I dont really want the jello sent.
Thanks for any ideas you may have.

Thats all there is to it. Food coloring works well. For puget sound try green. Let soak over night. Good luck!

I fish a lot of herring for springers, and like to bring both dyed and straight brined.

Blue is my dye color of choise, I add food color to my brine and It's good to go.

Some days blue will out fish reg. brined big time.....noticed on dirty color water days it can help.

One othe thing to try is pour some dyed brine on a paper plate, then lay your herring in it so only one side is being dyed....let set for 20-30 minutes then put back in reg. brine....this give your herring a blue/silver flip flop...sometimes this limited the boat when they went off plain herring bite.

I tried to keep some overnight once. They all dyed. :p

Blue Food Coloring. PS make sure the lid is on tight!. Where rubber gloves or everyone will call you "Smurf".

Try the search function -- it works quite well. Here are a few links usin "herring cure":

http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=008552#000007

http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=009081#000002

http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=007662#000008

Good Luck
Roger

Thanks for the info guys im going to have to give it a try.About how long do you brine them?

Duroboat,
I use maybe 3 or 4 cups of water and a cup of rock/pickling salt then add food coloring and a teaspoon of powder milk. The salt toughens up frozen herring and the powdered milk helps the scales intact. I leave the herring in this mixture in the freezer and pull out the whole container when I go fishing. Seems to last through 2/3 thaws before the herring becomes to soft to use. I use blue or green for coloring.

Duroboat, last fall we had some fun dying herring slightly differently. Rather than adding the food coloring to the brine - and thereby coloring my brine tub - after I removed the herring from their overnight brine bath, I put them in a baggie and then added 3 or 4 drops of the coloring; it created a very intense color.

We did some blue, some red, some green, and some with red egg-cure for both color and scent.

From the 3 days we fished with 'em I'd say our results were inconclusive but we'll keep at it. Like others have said, I'm sure there are days when a certain color really helps.

Also RapidRoberts tip above for how to color one side sounds great. Springers watch out!

BTW, anyone know the formula for making 'chartreuse' using food dyes, I've not been able to get it? Purple too?