How to Cure Salmon Skein

Before I start, I want to emphasize that there is no ONE best way to cure skein for salmon fishing, as water clarity and many other factors influence what fish may prefer.

Dye colour, curing length, egg texture, and recipe can all influence the final product.

Here’s how I like to prepare my skein for fishing the Niagara River and surrounding “big-water” environments.

Product used for curing: Pautzke “balls O’ fire” Fire cure red.

I like this cure because it gives the eggs a vibrant colour and intense scent, perfect for standing out in heavy turbid water like the Niagara River. Pautzke fire cure also has krill powder added which I believe gets more bites.

What is skein?

Skeins are the membrane bound eggs inside a maturing salmonid. As fall wears on, female salmon are able to break up eggs by jumping out of the water and smacking down on their sides, and also naturally as the water cools. Skein is usually fished on an egg loop knot, but eggs can also be scraped out of the membrane and used in roe bags.

Salmon fishing with cured skein, either bottom - bounced, or under a float can be a ton of fun when fall kings are on an egg bite. Skein fishing is commonplace on the west coast where our Great Lakes salmon originated, and is widely recognized as an effective technique for kings once their initial preference for hardware tapers off.

While salmon running up smaller streams can be finessed with beads and roe bags, fish running larger systems like the Niagara river, or milling around in big areas like marinas often show preference for larger, more aggressive egg presentations such as toonie or larger size skein chunks.

My recipe creates eggs that don’t milk out super quickly and therefore favours areas with heavy current or stained water. I also prefer to dry my eggs a long time so that they stay together better when tumbling around in the water, or making a long-bomb cast. A looser, wetter cure will milk out more scent into the water but won’t be as durable in big water.

How to to make the best salmon eggs

Starting with a good egg: Most labels on the major egg cure jars will tell you that to end with a good egg, you need to start with a good egg - I can’t stress this enough.

A good egg is one that doesn’t have a lot of blood throughout the skein membrane (reducing spoil) and one that has not absorbed any water, meaning it can absorb as much cure as possible.

The best way to achieve this is to bleed your hen salmon immediately after you land it. Cutting the area under the salmon’s head where the gill plates come together with a sharp knife or scissors is the best way to dispatch the fish while letting the heart pump excess blood out of the fish.

This isn’t a glorious task, but if you are going to take the fish’s life, I believe you should strive to get the most out of fish as possible.

After 10 or 15 minutes, the fish should be bled out as much as possible. Now, you can remove the skeins from the belly of the salmon. If you are harvesting the fish near the water, make sure the skeins never touch the water. If possible, dry the skeins off with paper towels so they are as dry as possible.

Once you have your curing materials and area ready, it is time to prepare the skein for curing with powder cure.

Butterfly Fillet

This is a step that a lot of people miss and is critically important. ‘Opening up’ the skein with scissors or a knife ensure that the maximum number of eggs can be reached by the cure. If this step is ignored, cure can’t reach the center of the skein and more times than not, after a few days the skein goes bad even after being cured because the center never actually cured fully.

The photo shows my knife blade “scoring” the skein and how the shape changes from a dense brick of eggs to more of a sheet. When scoring, be careful to not push through too far so that you cut the membrane – this is what you will use to secure the bait onto the hook with when fishing. EGG LOOP KNOT VIDEO

Ideally, move to the curing process as soon as possible, but if this isn’t possible, anytime within 24 hours of removing the skeins will leave you with a good product. Of course, this is all dependent on bleeding the fish and keeping the skeins as dry as possible.

Skein Curing Process

Wearing rubber gloves, shake on enough cure so that eggs are coated with the powder. But not so much that there is excess cure sitting on the eggs. I go with the idea that I can always add more cure if I want, but if I burn the eggs, I’m screwed.

Instantly, you will notice liquid coming out of the eggs and creating a brine. This is the sulfates in the cure doing their job. Run your hands through the eggs to coat the entire skein with the cure, including any eggs towards the center of the skein.

After working the cure through the skeins, let them rest in a bucket for 30-45 minutes, occasionally stiring them with a gloved hand. This will ensure the cure coats all of the eggs.

 After the eggs are cured, it’s time to dry them. A wire rack or old BBQ grill is preferred, but I have always had good luck with old A&P grocery baskets.

Depending on the humidity level where you are curing, lay your skeins on the rack for 8-16 hours, or until tacky to the touch. I like to flip the skeins on the rack at least once to ensure both sides dry evenly, and package the eggs once the membrane side of the skein starts to become leathery.

If the membrane is too soft or brittle, the skein will fling off when casting.

Skein Fishing

Whether you will be bottom-bouncing salmon skein or fishing the chunks under a float, salmon skein fishing is an exciting and addictive fishing technique.

This fall, consider saving the eggs from a harvested fish and take your season to the next level with skein fishing.