This is why I consider Pautzke’s BorX O’ Fire to be one of the best salmon egg cures on the market.

During fall of 2019 my health fell into decline near the end of my salmon season. What I couldn’t have anticipated was that it would end up keeping me off of the water for 619 long, long, LONG, days… I didn’t want all of my freshly harvested chinook salmon eggs to just go to waste so I decided that I would get everything soaking/curing and sometime later down the line I would simply finish them up and then freeze them………………….. 2 years later……

2 years of countless doctor visits, blood tests, needle pokes, surgical procedures, scopes, scans, and even a systemic overhaul of my boat from top to bottom that nearly broke my spirit. Alas… There was finally a little light at the end of the tunnel! The boat came rumbling back to life but I quickly realized that I had no inventory of fishable eggs left in the freezer. They say, “You have to spend money in order to make money,” and it’s no different for salmon fishing, “You need bait to catch bait.”

I knew it was a Hail Mary attempt but I decided to see what kinda shape my pickled Pautzke’s BorX O’ Fire salmon eggs were in after basically being neglected and forgotten in the fridge for 2 years. I was totally expecting mold, white spots, deteriorated membrane, funky smell, and flat broken eggs, but instead they were flawlessly preserved. While my video doesn’t share the steps I take for the initial cure marinade I thought I would share the methodology that I use for the final curing stage. These eggs went from 2 years in the fridge, to one day of drying, to one day in the freezer, then straight over to the river, and the very first time I dropped a chunk to the bottom I hooked into a gritty Sacramento River king salmon.