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[Animal Chin]

How long are your eggs in your cure?

I basically follow the directions. I usually fish or freeze them after 48 hours or when I see all the liquid has been re-absorbed. I made the mistake of dumping the juice out my first time curing, won't do that again. Good video.

That guy uses about twice the amount of cure I use though.

Reason why I asked is sometimes my eggs are gooey, like a few posts above and other times they're firmer, fuller and more translucent. Anyhow thanks, I'll figure it out.

Caught my first Vedder coho today (on a blade...haha). I bled my fish like I normally do, and have never had blood in my eggs, but today I'm looking at the eggs I took out of the fish, and they're pretty red. I expected them to be more of a pinkish or orange color.. what do you guys think?

I normally don't use roe for steelhead, and not a fan of coho roe anyway, but someone told me coho roe works great for steelhead. I'll take a look at them again later tonight, but not going to bother using them if they're filled with blood...

[Noahs Arc]

I think those are some good looking eggs once you wick the blood away on the main veins.
Chinook and Chum roe has a more pale colour right out of the fish then coho roe.

[riptide]

If you are concerned with the blood line, snip one end of the vein and squeeze the blood out. All blood should be removed if possible. The colour looks great, no need for additives.

[Animal Chin]

OK Good.. no I use an exacto blade (just figure this one out, use to use my filet knife) to make relief cuts, and a teaspoon to wick out the vein. I was just concerned about the color of the eggs. I don't remember coho having such red eggs.

Think I'll try that 3-2-1 cure with these eggs and fish them for steelhead. When bar fishing, I've never caught coho on coho eggs. Even when super fresh from the day before. I'm sure they've worked for some people. Sockeye eggs never do well either.

Thanks.

[243Pete]

I try to match roe to what has already spawned, like pink eggs for springs, spring eggs for coho and chum eggs for steelhead. I've had coho take pink eggs but not as many as more larger eggs like spring and chum. My only reason for this is just to match conditions and what they might expect to see in the river during that time. I haven't caught to many doe cohos this season (not that I should be complaining) but I want to cure some eggs up for steel season cause their eggs are more medium sized compared to springs and chum.

[riptide]

Think I'll try that 3-2-1 cure with these eggs and fish them for steelhead. 

Make sure you use noniodized salt ...Good luck

[Animal Chin]

Just for those who were wondering, I froze my roe in small individual use freezer bags instead of freezing them in canning jars. After curing I put the chunks on parchment paper and froze for 48 hours. Vacuum sealed with no eggs broken. It's been about 10 days and the bags are still sealed tight.

I have a chest freezer. I remember doing this long ago and had eggs in my regular fridge freezer for 24 hours and it turned into a bloody mess. So maybe a bit longer in the freeze if you don't have a chest freezer.

It was chum roe and I cured it 3 different ways. The last picture is coho roe just before vacuuming. It took me about 5 minutes to seal them in 4 bags, might be too long.. the last 2 had a couple eggs break, so vacuum seal them quickly.

I doubt it'll catch me more fish than just chucking them in a ziplock bag and freezing ... but whatever.









3-2-1 Cure coho roe:

[243Pete]

Nice colors and look on the roe, the natural colored stuff looks really nice with that very light amber color, I think I'm going to try some of the more natural colors next time I get a good batch of eggs.
I haven't vacumed sealed any of the roe I've gotten as I gave pretty much all my roe to a buddy who uses a LOT of it... a couple cohos with good roe and chum with nice chunky skeins... sigh I wanted to prep those for winter steelhead but oh well... I still got some extra pink and spring roe sitting in the freezer. The loose frozen stuff seems to be in good condition still except for one small bag that may have gotten some freezer burn.... Oh well if those eggs are toast I'll just keep the juice and use those on the wool and beads this winter.

[Tenz85]

Someone mentioned adding scents but does anyone add scented oils like anise, krill, nightcrawler or herring and if so how does it affect the curing process?

[TheLostSockeye]

Someone mentioned adding scents but does anyone add scented oils like anise, krill, nightcrawler or herring and if so how does it affect the curing process?

i would only add a scent once the roe ball/ bag is on your hook. The scents are mostly oils and that stuff is gross it gets on your hands and does not come off making everything you touch all greasy.

[243Pete]

Someone mentioned adding scents but does anyone add scented oils like anise, krill, nightcrawler or herring and if so how does it affect the curing process?

Like LostSockeye said, I've tried adding some of the pro-cure scents like krill and anise at the same time while using like pro-cure and I found that the stuff is either really soft to the point where it feels like it's just mush in my fingers or/and oily and greasey, while this may not be a bad thing this stuff doesn't come out easily with just washing my hands in water and actually requires a good cleaner like orange clean.
There are some recipes on youtube which use oils during/ after the curing process but I've found that I never really needed to add any additional scents to my roe, you can always try and see what works well for yourself cause somethings work better for others and vice versa.
For myself I just throw my roe into a bag of Pautzke fire cure, leave it out for 4-5 hours at room temp, tumble every half hour to hour so juice and everything rolls around, put into the fridge for 24 hours, tumble the fridge kept stuff every 8 hours and then cut it up into small portions and store in Borax.

[Tenz85]

For myself I just throw my roe into a bag of Pautzke fire cure, leave it out for 4-5 hours at room temp, tumble every half hour to hour so juice and everything rolls around, put into the fridge for 24 hours, tumble the fridge kept stuff every 8 hours and then cut it up into small portions and store in Borax.

I use a similar process with the fire cure. I like how the borax reduces freezer burn and find it stiffens and dries the bait out which can be good or bad. I just got the borax o fire by Pautzke and will see how this stuff works.

[243Pete]

I use a similar process with the fire cure. I like how the borax reduces freezer burn and find it stiffens and dries the bait out which can be good or bad. I just got the borax o fire by Pautzke and will see how this stuff works.

I've tried putting the roe into the freezer both ways and they seem fine when I defrost them 24 hours before I go on a trip. I'm still tempted to use the vacume sealer and keeping a batch for a year or two and seeing what happens, kinda worried the vacuming process might destroy the eggs (crushing them) and ending up with a pile of gooey egg juice.

[Tenz85]

Not too sure about how freezing and vac sealing works but I sometimes vac seal. I usually freeze them first and then seal bc the eggs won't break if theyre frozen. Issue I find with sealing frozen eggs is that they have air pockets around the eggs which can lead to freezer burn. If I vac seal without freezing eggs, I use the vac pause button once the air is out and then manual seal button. I don't get a lot of eggs, so I conserve what I have by curing asap then storing as needed - some times just refrigerator instead of freezer.  If it was a batch that was on the moister side and I didn't use all of what I'd taken out, I can reuse the rest another day to a certain extent.