David Johnson
10-09-2009, 12:08 AM
It is the time of year for everyone to be putting up eggs. Fall chinook are coming in and, especially this year, 1,000's and 1,000's of coho and flooding up stream.
And with the rain expected next week they are going to be thick on all the hatchery streams.
First things first, take care of your eggs. Bleed the fish, keep the eggs cool and dry, clean all the blood out of them and cure them up ASAP. Don't let them sit in the fridge for two days. All this will make a big difference.
For the cure-
Lots of us have our own cure we mix up. The basic ingredients are borax, sugar, salt and/or sodium sulfite. Usually mixed in various proportions (like 3, 2, 1 or 1, 1, 1, 1) there are other things to add but if I told I’d have to kill you.
If you don't have your own cure of if you don’t have the time or means, pretty much all the commercial cures on the market are good as long as you follow the directions.
Something else you can also try is to mix and match. Try mixing two or more cures to come with a custom cure.
A few other things you can do are substitute one of the commercial cures for the sodium sulfite component of a mix or Jell-O for part of the sugar component.
A little sodium nitrate added works as a mold inhibitor.
Now that you got your eggs cured up you have to store them.
They will last for a month or two in the fridge or years in the freezer. The thing that helps is to keep air away from them.
Vac packing is best but you can put it in a jar with a little wax paper then light it and screw on the lid. This will burn up the air in the jar.
I use a jar attachment on the vac packer but recently I also started putting them in plastic storage containers and then vacuum packing the whole thing in a vac pack bag. These containers store well and it’s nice to have plastic instead of glass while hiking the bank.
http://www.ifish.net/gallery/data/500/medium/005-31.JPG
http://www.ifish.net/gallery/data/500/medium/017-1.JPG
http://www.ifish.net/gallery/data/500/medium/00529.JPG
And with the rain expected next week they are going to be thick on all the hatchery streams.
First things first, take care of your eggs. Bleed the fish, keep the eggs cool and dry, clean all the blood out of them and cure them up ASAP. Don't let them sit in the fridge for two days. All this will make a big difference.
For the cure-
Lots of us have our own cure we mix up. The basic ingredients are borax, sugar, salt and/or sodium sulfite. Usually mixed in various proportions (like 3, 2, 1 or 1, 1, 1, 1) there are other things to add but if I told I’d have to kill you.
If you don't have your own cure of if you don’t have the time or means, pretty much all the commercial cures on the market are good as long as you follow the directions.
Something else you can also try is to mix and match. Try mixing two or more cures to come with a custom cure.
A few other things you can do are substitute one of the commercial cures for the sodium sulfite component of a mix or Jell-O for part of the sugar component.
A little sodium nitrate added works as a mold inhibitor.
Now that you got your eggs cured up you have to store them.
They will last for a month or two in the fridge or years in the freezer. The thing that helps is to keep air away from them.
Vac packing is best but you can put it in a jar with a little wax paper then light it and screw on the lid. This will burn up the air in the jar.
I use a jar attachment on the vac packer but recently I also started putting them in plastic storage containers and then vacuum packing the whole thing in a vac pack bag. These containers store well and it’s nice to have plastic instead of glass while hiking the bank.
http://www.ifish.net/gallery/data/500/medium/005-31.JPG
http://www.ifish.net/gallery/data/500/medium/017-1.JPG
http://www.ifish.net/gallery/data/500/medium/00529.JPG