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.