March 2026 / CRO Spring Chinnok Pro Tips

Springer Bait Tips

With the 2026 Clearwater River Spring Chinook run just around the corner the salmon guides here at CRO would like to share a little secret information about how we cure our bait for Spring Chinook fishing on the Clearwater River. Quikfish and other lures may work fine at the beginning of the season but as the water temps warm and the river clears if you aren’t running some salmon eggs either behind a diver or back bouncing with a weight you are missing the boat. Springers simply love to bite down on a nice juicy bait of salmon roe and that is just a fact! So here is a guideline of how we like to make OUR bait for Springer season!

Egg Curing Tips

These best bait will be made from the Salmon you catch in the early part of the season. Make sure you bleed your fish and remover the skeins without getting a bunch of blood and guts all over them. Place your clean skeins in a ziplock bag and keep them cold in a cooler or the refrigerator until you have time to cure them. Make sure you get to curing these eggs within NO LONGER than couple days. The quicker you get them cured the better they will fish. 

Normally we like to cure our bait in a bucket. Cut the skeins of roe into bait sized chunks. The size of a 50 cent piece seems to be just about right. Go bigger than you think if you are uncertain. There is nothing wrong with a golfball sized bait for these fish. 

Place you baits in the bottom of your bucket and apply a 50/50 mixture of RED Pautzke’s Fire Cure and Borax o’ Fire bait cures at mixture of 4 tablespoons of cure for every 1LB of roe. Now use your bucket to spin the bait around and around until all the cure is thoroughly mixed onto the bait chunks. Do this a couple times over the next 20 minutes while the cure starts to react to the bait and dissolve into a juice. Now let your bait sit to cure for 2 hours. After 2 hour you need to drain off 1/2 of the accumulated juices. Once drained it is time to add these measured ingredients per each LB of roe…

• 1/2 teaspoon Pro Cure Monster Bite
• 1/2 teaspoon Pure anise oil
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 2 teaspoons Pro Cure Bloody Tuna Powder

Now go back to swirling your bait around in the bottom of the bucket until everything has mixed it way evenly onto the bait.

Now remove your bait and place in a sealable Tupperware container. Place your bait in the refrigerator for a couple of days and it will be ready to fish. You will notice that all the juice and other ingredient will have been absorbed into the bait. Bait cured in this fashion will be firm, plump and full of scent, but not super messy and sloppy. We hate sloppy wet bait for the mess it makes in our boats, and just trust us…the fish are gonna love it!

Thanks and Fish On!!!

Jason Schultz - 208-305-4549