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How to cure eggs for Salmon Fishing
Feb 5, 2025
How to cure eggs for Salmon Fishing, how to collect eggs properly, curing with Pautzke's cures, fishing strategies with eggs,
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hello and welcome to another edition of
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Pacific Northwest best life today we're
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going to be curing some eggs some salmon
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eggs to help us catch catch some some
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fish may be on the coast some Silver's
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some kings as those runs get going
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between now and and October it's been a
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great pink season so far and hopefully
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you've gotten a lot of pinks and you've
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also gotten some hands and some eggs in
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those pinks when I first started fishing
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for salmon up here in Pacific Northwest
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my catch success grew tremendously when
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I started curing my own eggs and so it's
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really a really a must for anyone who's
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serious about fishing for salmon up here
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and one of the places where this whole
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process starts is when you first get the
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fish and you you want to properly bleed
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it which is something you do by reaching
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under the gill plate and breaking one of
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the gills you can do it with your
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fingers you can do with a knife you want
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to make sure that fish bleeds out while
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it's still alive
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you can bak it on the head to stun it
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and then and then and then bleed it and
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get all the blood out of the fish and
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you will end up with eggs that have a
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lot less blood in it as well these are
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these are eggs from properly blood fish
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if this fish wasn't blood properly you
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would have the blood all through these
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skeins and so it's a really important
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part of the egg current process you
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don't want that blood affecting the
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smell of the eggs and the quality of
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them you can get some of it out with a
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little butter knife here what's
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remaining kind of remove
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dirt and debris the other thing I would
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cover in just acquiring the eggs is this
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is something that is always part of my
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pack that goes with me it's just a
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ziploc bag trash bag and paper towels
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and when I'm gutting the fish off the
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living blood you know taking again this
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stuff out and I end up with a clean
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environment to put the eggs take the
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eggs out of the fish into the clean
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environment you know a lot of times
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you're fishing on the bank of let's say
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a river like the Puyallup super muddy
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dirty and you don't want to contaminate
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your eggs so pull the eggs out of the
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fish drop them up here and then once
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once you've finished gutting all your
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fish getting all your eggs out of the
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hens then you know they go into this bag
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that's where I took them and they were
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in my refrigerator they stayed nice and
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cool and tell the point when I'm ready
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to do some curing and and that way you
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can make sure that they stay in the best
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possible shape sometimes you'll end up
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getting eggs from someone else who will
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say oh you want my eggs and they won't
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always take care of them the best way
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one things I'll do is I'll inspect them
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will smell and make sure there's no
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funky smells coming from them you know
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fishing with eggs it's all about
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confidence if you're putting in the time
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down there fishing eggs under a float
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you want to know that your eggs are
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fishing really well you don't want to be
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questioning hmm did I do that right in
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the curing process did where my eggs bad
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should I have you know got more blood
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out of them or maybe not even cured them
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at all cuz they were smelly they have
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smell to them and so you have that
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confidence if you follow you know the
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same method that for chewing eggs that
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you've used previously when you've
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caught fish and so you're not gonna get
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all the blood out of them but you can
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just you know do best to
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eliminate as much as you can there's
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some little small eggs there you know
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different salmon have different quality
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of eggs for for this you know these are
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all from pinks Pink's have pretty good
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eggs though sometimes they're a little
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bit loose Kings also have good eggs but
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the the berries the individual eggs are
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are quite large and sometimes that
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doesn't fish as well for just holding
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together if you're in rougher water
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faster flowing water the best absolute
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best eggs for the curing and fishing
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with our are from from coho salmon and
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but these will do these will absolutely
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fish really well the other thing I'm
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doing here is I'm kind of I'm
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butterflying
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and so I'm just running again this is a
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dull knife bring it down the center just
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to make sure that when I start to put
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apply the Cure on them that I'm getting
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the maximum coverage and surface area so
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now I've got somewhat clean eggs I've
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got got a good area here most of the
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blood out and we can start applying cure
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so in terms of cure
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I pretty much stick to the pot ski twine
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the cures had the most success with them
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and generally I do two cures usually I
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do the brac sapphire and pink and then I
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add this egg nectar to that as well and
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but today we're gonna be applying fire
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cure or fire cure is really more optimal
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for for king salmon
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in a lot of conditions it's got sulfites
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and things that really turn the bite on
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for salmon this combination is sort of
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an all-around good egg for salmon or
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steelhead it's good to have multiple
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Q's just because there's times when one
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will be performing well and the other
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one won't be and you want to be able to
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switch it up out there on the river and
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get something to kind of turn the bite
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on so this is a pot Sookie's fire cure
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read times and when we apply the cure I
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kind of hold hold one end and just kind
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of move it around and turn my fingers
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because there's these folds in between
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each section of the skein here and I
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just want to get sure into each of those
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folds I'm wearing black nitrile gloves
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because I want to minimize my scent on
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the eggs another part an important part
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of the process as well as I don't want
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this crap all over my all over my
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fingers either that's pretty intense
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stuff so we'll apply this and I'm just
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putting in this ziplock bag I'm gonna
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cure them with eventually I'll vacuum
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seal these but I like having a ziploc
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bag that I can keep them in as the
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curing process is going on allows me to
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I'll put it inside a vacuum sealed bag
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so whenever I open them you know might
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be next month might be could even be a
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year from now I've even used eggs two
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years old and there's still fish really
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well that way I can reseal them as I'm
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using them on the river if I don't use
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them all I can stash in the fridge and
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be good to go
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now we're gonna sprinkle just some more
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just for good measure some more fire
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cure and I'm not gonna take any the air
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out of this the plug bag I actually want
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there to be air I'm gonna kind of beat
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them up a bit what happens is when this
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effect of the cure being on all the eggs
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is that it will cause them to milk and
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sure and then it will reabsorb it'll
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reabsorb they'll get it'll get really
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when you do it right it'll get really
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runny and a lot of liquid should be in
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the bottom here as you see in the first
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part of the curing process and then as
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the curing process finishes the eggs a
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lot drier and it'll milk out when you
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when you cut it and you start fishing
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with that on the river II of it a great
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fishing egg lots of scent lots of stuff
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to get that bite turned on for
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especially king salmon and the silvers
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the silvers will take these eggs as well
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especially on years on good pink run
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years you get a great egg bite for
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silvers as well and even though rivers
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like the Puyallup and the carbon have
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almost zero visibility because of the
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glacial silt you can you can get a great
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bite going with eggs that are just
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properly presented and slow enough
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current in good holding areas and you
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find you know the bottom is your
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floating eggs and you come up six inches
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you know for six centuries sometimes
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even less than that you can get
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you know 10 plus fish days fishing eggs
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on on on those zero visibility rivers is
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one of the great things about fishing
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eggs glacial rivers to here at sea
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you're starting to see the liquid
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develop here that's great it's great
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sign that's what I want I'm gonna do
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this for a little bit I'm gonna throw
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this in my refrigerator and I'm gonna
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check it every maybe 15 30 minutes and
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beat it up some more
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and then and then I'll do that for
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probably the first couple hours and and
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then I'll leave it sit for 24 hours and
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then and then I will freeze it and back
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once it's frozen solid then I'll back
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him seal it and stow it and be ready to
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go
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