Christmas

I was lucky enough to get out on Friday and Saturday. Friday with all the rain I decided to jump the border and head to PA. The water was dirty, but I still managed to do pretty well hooking into many fish. With the higher flows, it sure makes the fight much tougher, and more enjoyable to me. Fished up high and hooked into about half drop backs, half freshies.

It was a good couple days to get out as there was next to no one out. PA guys must not like the cold very much, as we walked up and fished any hole that we wanted too, it was nice. All fish caught on eggs, uncured as well as BorXofire cured. Fish came from fast water, as well as tail outs. We hit one tail out on Saturday just before we left, we hooked about a dozen fish in the exact same spot. Just have to cover water and find them!

Past few days of fishing

I have been on Christmas Break since the start of the weekend, and I have been taking full advantage!  I have fished everywhere from Elk creek, to the Rocky River today and have had a blast this weekend.  Fishing in white out conditions was the highlight so far.  Just felt right to be on the river during that time, and I guess we were the only ones that felt that way as we saw no one else out.  Had all the fish to ourselves and did quite well.

All fish have come on a combination of natural, uncured egg sacs and BorXoFire natural cured eggs.  Yellow and pink mesh being the hottest producing colors.  Get out while you can as we have some ideal temperatures for winter fishing as well as plenty of fish in the systems.

Here I had some natural steelhead skein that had previously been frozen and thawed.  Well as you can see it got a little mushy and the eggs starting popping all over.  Well instead of just wasting them I decided to see if the Fire Brine could save these eggs.  Well you can be the judge.

After.

Pautzke Fire Brine will plump your old deflated eggs up, and they are good to go again.  These will all be hitting the water tomorrow as we will be on another quest for the big fish.

Re-Curing eggs with Pautzkes Fire Brine

Today I wanted to cure up some nice red eggs for the dirty water conditions I will be fishing this weekend.  So I looked in my egg collection, and noticed that I still had a bad of BorXoFire cured eggs in pink.  I put them in a cup and filled them up just over the top of the eggs with the Red Fire Brine.  I put them in the fridge last night, and pulled them out this afternoon.  Boy are they RED.  It has a great color to it, and I am really looking forward to fishing them this weekend.  The thing I love about Fire Brine is that the eggs plump up VERY nicely in this brine.  If you have eggs that look slightly "deflated", put them in your choice color of Fire Brine, and you will have good eggs again.  They have 6 colors to choose from, and the best part is you can mix/match any colors to your personal preference.  Place the eggs in a jar or container, fill it up just over the top of the eggs and you're done!  The eggs will float, but as they soak in the cure, they will sink and plump up.  Leave them in the cure anywhere from 5 hours- a day or two.  If you forget about them, and it is a few days later, not a big deal.  Super easy and super effective on steelhead, what more could you want in a cure?

Here are some eggs cured up by Ben See from Steelheadalleyangler.com in Pautzkes Fire Brine.

Put these in Santas glass for Christmas instead of milk :)

12/12

Fished the Chagrin on Monday, with what seemed like everyone else in Ohio.  From my observations lately it seems that Monday is the new Saturday.  Despite cooler temps, and tons of slush there were still a lot of guys out.  Saw plenty of fish caught, including a few of my own.  Most of my takes were in the extreme tailout parts of the holes.  A few took in the middle of the runs, and even had a fish in the head of some really fast water.  Just goes to show that while you can predict where most fish will be this time of year, there are always a few in the faster waters also.  Pautzkes BorXofire made up for the majority of the catches, along with some eggs cured in FireBrine.  With rain on its way the rivers will be high and muddy once again, so watch those gauges closely and get out while you can before the deep freeze sets in, as it looks to be just around the corner.

If you are new to steelhead fishing and are looking to get out for a trip to learn the ropes, I suggest Robs Guide Service.  He offers fly, spin, and centerpin fishing trips.  Very affordable and will help shorten the learning curve A LOT!!
www.robsguideservice.blogspot.com

Big Fish

12/8

Well I just got done tying up a few dozen sacs for tomorrows little steelhead journey.  I think we will be staying in Ohio, looking to hit some of the smaller water in eastern Ohio.  I have tied up a multitude of eggs in several different cures.  I have eggs in BorXofire, Firecure and Fire brine.  I like to take a few different cures with me when I go on a trip.  I have fished a hole where all I did was switch up eggs from different cures, and caught an extra fish or 2.  We fished a hole on elk for a few hours one day and had landed a lot of fish between my buddy and I.  We thought it was "fished out" until another friend took our spot over using eggs that were in Pautzkes cure I didn't have at the time.  He proceeded to land about a dozen more fish out of this hole.  Just goes to show that having many different colors and cure combinations will optimize your chances at putting a few extra fish on the bank.

Gold label Salmon eggs from Pautzke!

Fire Brine

Ben See of Steelheadalleyangler.com has made a very informative blog for Pautzke about using their new Fire Brine and curing single eggs.  It's a great read, check it out.

Ben See, Curing single eggs with Pautzke Fire Brine

Crowds

Fished out east on Thursday, found PRIME conditions on elk.  Lots of fish were landed in all types of water.  Most of the fish were dropback spawned out hens.  All fish caught on Pautzke BorXofire natural color eggs, with Liquid krill scent added.

I fished out at Rocky River today.  Lots of fresh fish around, and the river has really given up very good numbers recently.  I was in a sort of mood today that I wanted solitude over numbers of fish, as there were a ton of people out today (as expected).  So I drove out east to a grand feeder and found only 1 car in the parking lot.  I fished my way upstream landing several fish in just under an hour.  I found exactly what I had set out for, a few fighters, and peace and quiet.  All fish caught on the usual BorXofire cured eggs.  Fish were caught in the deeper pools, in the tailouts.  It's about that time of the year where the water starts to get real cold, and you can find the fish holed up.  There were still several fish caught Thursday in the faster water, but the majority were in slower deeper water.

I also fished a creek that was recently stocked with rainbows.  I took out my fly rod and had some fun with that, first time using it and it performed very nicely.  I cheated and put Pautzke Gold label salmon eggs on my flies, I'm dirty I know.  But the trout loved them.

Black Friday Fishing with Pautzke Fire Power

My buddy and I made it out to PA for a little black Friday fishing.  Needless to say it was a complete zoo.  We were lucky enough to get one hole to ourselves first thing in the morning and we camped on that hole for 3 hours.  I normally don't like to do this, but there really wasn't much of an option go to anywhere else.  However we did do pretty well out of this hole, landing double digits easily between the 2 of us.  After that we headed back to Ohio, as there were just too many people to do anything.  We hit up a feeder on the way back, and I landed a couple of smaller, very colorful bucks.  All in all it was a great day to be out, very nice weather, just a little too many fisherman for my taste.  One of the keys to getting a few more bites today was using Pautzkes Fire Power.  It is a powdered attractant, that is 100% Krill.  I coated my egg container with it after the bite slowed down, and picked up a few more fish.  All you do is simply just sprinkle this onto your bait, and you're good to go.  It is very easy to use, and it is VERY powerful.  Give it a try sometime, and get those few extra fish, ya never know, that could be your personal best, on the last cast!  A lot of people don't believe in spending a few extra bucks on attractants, but I think it can make a difference.  We spend so much money on gas, equipment, licensing etc. that why not spend a few extra bucks on something that will help put more fish on the bank, to me it only makes sense.

Bonus Brown that fell victim to Fire Power!

11/21/11 Fire Cure Process

I have included a few pictures to go along with my process in using fire cure to cure up some steelhead skeins.

First butterfly your skeins, either with scissors or a knife, this opens up the skeins and exposes more eggs, allowing the cure to get into the deeper parts of the skein.

Next open your bottle of fire cure, and sprinkle onto the open eggs.  You don't want to completely submerse the eggs in the powder that you can't see them, but sprinkle enough that the cure can cover all of the eggs.

Then lightly sprinkle the membrane of the skein also, to ensure cure can get all around the eggs.  I like to place them in a zip lock bag next, and rotate several times to get the powder all throughout the eggs.  You will notice that they "juice up" right away, and you will see egg juice in the bottom of the bag.  This is what you WANT.  This is the cure drawing the juice from the eggs.  Slowly the eggs will start to re-absorb their juice, and this juice will have the cure in it, therefore curing your eggs.  Place in the fridge, rotating your bag or jar of eggs a few times a day.  After 3 days of refrigeration your eggs will be ready to fish, this ensure that they have enough time to complete the curing process.  You can do this same process with loose singles as well as skein.

Here are some eggs cured with the Fire Cure in pink.

My favorite part of curing with Pautzkes cure, besides how effective they are, is that they are EXTREMELY easy to use, for even the newest steelheader!

The best part, results:

Pautzke cure delivers.

11/19/11

Fished the Chagrin today for a little bit.  Met up with our friends from Canada as this is their last few days here on steelhead alley.  Things were pretty good this morning, and slowing down towards the afternoon.  Lots of people out today, with some good colored water.  Skein bombs were working well today, along with the staple BorXofire cured eggs in pink and natural colors.  Pressured fish may respond to different offerings, and this week if things start to get low and clear I will be using several Pautzke baits, and see if I can't get a good bite in the clear water.  I will report back on what I find.  Good water is all around the alley at the moment, so get out before it is too late, and things get tough again.

Pautzke fishing products

Over the next month or so I will be testing out a variety of fishing products from Pautzke Bait company.  If you haven't heard about them, they are most famous for their Balls' O Fire salmon eggs in the jars.  They also have a line of products to cure eggs with, and let me tell you, once you start fishing this cure, you won't want to fish anything else.  I will be posting about the variety of products they have, along with how-to's, and of course the results!!! That's all that really matters.

11/18/11 report.

I made the venture out east again yesterday with a buddy of mine.  This was his first time in PA, and I can assure you it won't be his last.  We hooked into fish all day long.  All of the fish came on Pautzke BorXofire (natural) cured salmon eggs, in yellow mesh netting.  The water was dropping temperature, and some of the bites seemed to be very light.  We had plenty of dunks, that resulted in swings and misses.  The egg sac didn't even look like it had been touched.  Then next drift through the spot again dunk, BOOM fish on.  Unless you are sure that you are dragging bottom, or there's a snag, it very well may be a nice steelhead.

Christmas eve, in November

Well it feels like Christmas eve right now.  I am at work till 4:00am this morning, then off East it is!!! Things are looking very promising for tomorrow, and I am pretty excited to say the least.  I have about 200 sacs tied up for tomorrows trip, last trip I went through about 100, so I am trying to stayed ahead of the curve this time around.  I will post back in the next day or 2, as I will likely be all over the alley, with some of our Canadian friends coming down to pound town.

11/14/11

Fishing this weekend was fairly rough, with low and clear conditions for Friday, then snow melt off bringing up the flows a little bit for the weekend.  We caught a few fish but nothing spectacular.  The river temperature dropped about 10 degrees from the snow, so I am wondering if maybe this had something to do with the mood change? Perhaps that, or all of the pressure they have seen since our last rain.  Rivers are on the rise now, and that means a good push (Hopefully) of fish should be on its' way into our rivers.  Hoping to see more Ohio fish in the mix now.  I will be looking to get out on Elk in the next few days, hopefully with some nice pictures to show for it!  I will be out fishing my Pautzke BorXofire cured eggs, probably in natural color, and pink.  Check back in a few days for an update, as hopefully I will be out on Steelheadalley, with some fresh chrome.

11/8/11

Got out on the big river today, with some luck.  It was one of those frustrating days though, losing more fish than I actually brought up to the shore.  Eggs weren't quite doing the trick, so I switched up and starting throwing a jig, and what seemed to be what they wanted.  Fish were hooked mostly in slower deeper pools, with slower water.  Remember to check your leaders often for freys, and knots.

weekend report

I had a drill weekend this weekend, so unfortunately I was only able to get out on Thursday.  I was going to head to the grand, as it was still flowing around 400, but I decided to take a detour instead, and boy am I glad I did.  I approached an awesome run that appeared to not been fished yet, (it was around 9:30am) and was real excited.  Water was an awesome 24" of GREEN.  First drift, boom fish on.  Second drift, another fish on.  I thought I would pick them up every drift, but then there was a lul in the storm.  For about 30 minutes I didn't get another fish.  So I moved down from the head of the run, to the tailout/frog water portions, and it was like flipping a light switch.  Proceeded to hook up with PA numbers here in our home waters of Ohio.  Pautzke BorXoFire natural color cured eggs were picking fish up left and right.  Yellow mesh was the biggest producer, and when I ran out of that color chartreuse came in a close second.  There was about a 100 yard stretch of water that steelhead all over it.  Best part was I had the entire run to myself for the majority of the madness.  Several fly guys wandered over after seeing my rod bent time after time.

I continued to hook fish, while they were coming up empty.  One of them wandered over and asked what I was using that was working so well.  He put on his egg patterns, but I don't quite think they give off the same scent as Pautzke cured eggs do.

All in all it was a fantastic day on the river, with well over double digits landed.  I am not totally a numbers guy, however fighting 20 fish, as compared to say 3 fish, is just more fun, but that's me.  Things are staying low and clear for what could be a while longer.  The are calling for rain later this week, and well I hope they are right.  I have seen several of our fish in the rivers now, so I am hoping that maybe with the next rain we can get a good push of Ohio fish.

Heres a pic of my big girl of the season so far in Ohio:

Low water

I haven't been out the last few days as school has gotten in the way, but no worries I will be out and about this coming Thursday.  I have drill this weekend, so this will be my only opportunity to get out.  Things are starting to get low and clear here in the alley, as there has been a lul in the numerous rain events that have occurred so far this fall.  I am not complaining though, as I think it should help set up fishing for a good winter.  Fish are spread out throughout the river systems, and one should not have a hard time finding some solitude with a few willing fish.  My go to egg cure this fall has been the BorXofire in natural color.  The milking property this cure brings to the eggs is awesome.  It seems to have really increased my catch rate.  I have fished the clearwater cured eggs also, and have only had minimal success with these.  All my confidence is in the Pautzke cured eggs.  I will try to post a report when I get done fishing Thursday, but I may not get back to the blog until my drill weekend is over.  Tight lines to all the weekend warriors out there.  Stealth tactics will be applied this weekend in the low, clear water.

10/29

Headed east this weekend with some friends.  Arrived to the river well before light, and we were rewarded with some good water all to ourselves.  The first three fish we landed all came on a triple, couldn't have started the day any better.  I look over and watch my buddy fighting a fish, I see my other friend swing back on a fish, and as I looked for my float in the stream, it was no where to be found, so I set the hook and boom fish on.  We all landed our fish and thought it was going to be one of those epic days.  We ended up hooking up with a bunch more fish before we decided to move.  Went higher up in the river system, and proceeded to whack some more fish in the lower clear water.  Boy were the crowds out today, and it was combat fishing.  We continued to dodge bullets, and fished among the crowds.  We were rewarded when we came up to a run, and the 2 people fishing it, left as we got there so we had a nice run to ourselves.  It was fish on for about 30 minutes as we hit fish on almost every drift.  Pautzke eggs in borxofire natural color with yellow mesh was the ticket.  All three of us were running the same drift, and time after time they would only take the yellow bags.  I have always heard people talking about color making such a big difference, and on this day that was certainly the case.  The water was clear, so part of me thinks that the yellow had a more natural tone to the eggs, and that made the difference.  After we left, we headed back to Ohio, and stopped at an eastern trib for a few hours.  We hooked up with several fish in that stream, and had most of the runs to ourselves.  It was a nice break from the zoo that we had fished earlier.  Most of the fish caught in the Ohio trib had some color to them, with a couple that were fresh.  The pink eggs in chartreuse mesh were taking most of the fish there.  Goes to show that it is always useful to carry a variety of colors and sizes, you just never know what the fish are keying in on.  The fall is starting to wind down, as old man winter takes his hold over northeast Ohio.  Enjoy the scenery while it lasts.

10/25

Hit up the Rocky River today, and hooked into a few.  Took my buddy Don out and got him into his first adult chromer of the year!  Certainly won't be his last either.  Rain is in the forecast for the next few days, though we will see how much of it we actually get.  I wouldn't mind a spike in the flows, as I am itching to get back out into a few special creeks.  All fish today were caught on Boraxofire eggs, in the natural color with chartreuse and pink mesh making up the colors.  It has been my experience that small details in fishing can make all the difference in the world, check your floats, check your main line, as well as your leaders.  Any fray in these will almost certainly end in a missed opportunity, which can be the missed fish of a lifetime!

Video

Ben See (steelheadalleyangler.com) put together this video of our day.  He does great work.

10/21/2011

Hit an east trib with some friends today.  Arrived early am, slightly unsure about what visibility we would be facing.  It was about 15" and clearing by the hour.  This was the day that every steelheader dreams about.  Perfect color, perfect flow, and fish all over the place.  I won't get into numbers but lets just say that we caught more than any steelheader needs to catch in a single day.  I went through roughly 120 egg sacs through out the day.  The hot color for me seemed to be natural color Boraxofire, with yellow mesh, although at times I think I could have caught them on a marshmallow.  The fish were holding in every type of water imaginable, fast slow, deep, shallow it did not seem to matter, hell we were catching them on the gravel in 12" of water (not lining them).  If you held your float cocked to the side, it would prevent hanging up on the gravel, and then your float would shoot to the side, and a nice steelhead would be thrashing around.  I will have to admit, having caught that many fish may have spoiled me, as this day was truly one for the memory banks.

Jumped the border

Today I jumped the border and went east to PA.  This was my first trip out there, and it will certainly not be the last.  I enjoyed fishing different types of water that I don't normally seek here on the Ohio tribs.  Anything that looked like it would hold fish did, and boy were they eager to eat some King Salmon eggs, cured in Borxofire.  I got to use my new custom floats that were made for me, from Steelheadalleyangler owner Ben See.  They are sick to say the least, enjoy the pics.

I have been busy tying up egg sacs for a trip out tomorrow morning.  I am taking 2 fellow Bass team members out to chase some chrome tomorrow morning.  There has been a slight bump in flow from the recent rain, with a little added color.  Hopefully a few eager fish have pushed in the lower parts of the system, and are eager to take an egg sac.  I will report back with how our day has gone, but hopefully we can bring a few fish for a quick photo op.

Canada trip 9/26/11

This was one of the most memorable fishing trips I have ever taken.  I had the pleasure to be invited out on this annual trip, and took full advantage of it.  Fighting a king salmon is unlike any steelhead I have fought before.  These fish will just bulldog you, they find the current and seem to just lay in it.  Their tales are so broad and powerful, it makes you wonder who is really in control.  The silver king made my trip.  It shot around the pool we were fishing, went up rapids as if I wasn't try to prevent it from going up there, pulling with everything I had.  It really is amazing to feel the power these fish hold.  At any second they can rip off 50 yards of line before you even know what happened.  I hooked one fresh fish that took me down river over 200 yards.  For 2 football fields I walked after this fish, merely just hoping it would stop running, but I soon realized that I was screwed.  I put the boots to that fish, and eventually the leader gave way.  I was extremely humbled by that fight.  Not all the fish were that excited, but every fish gave up a strong fight, which resulted in some sore arms after a few fights.  If you have never done so, I highly recommend a king salmon fishing trip.  There are a few rivers in Michigan that get good runs of kings, so you don't need to hop borders to catch them.  Although it's hard to beat the good company we had up in Canada.  I want to thank all of the guys that helped put me on the fish throughout those couple days, and I hope I have walked away with lifetime friends.  As they say, put the boots to em.