Sure cures.

Byline: MIKE STAHLBERG The Register-Guard

Salmon are like money - having some increases your chances of getting more.

Just as it takes money to make money, many anglers firmly believe that having a salmon - specifically, a hen salmon with a belly full of eggs - is the surest way to catch more salmon.

It's a notion that stems from the fact that, day in and day out, baits made from salmon eggs are among the most effective when it comes to catching salmon and steelhead. Such baits figure prominently in the arsenal of virtually every professional salmon fishing guide.

For ordinary anglers who would like the duplicate the pros' success, the tricky part isn't necessarily catching that first female salmon. It's deciding what to do with the eggs.

There's more to an effective roe-based bait than just getting your hands on a fresh skein of orange salmon or steelhead eggs, according to egg expert Scott Haugen of Walterville.

In fact, Haugen said your bait will likely prove to be much more effective if you never even touch it with your hands.

Wearing rubber gloves while handling skeins of salmon and steelhead eggs is just one of dozens of tips contained in Haugen's latest book, "Egg Cures: Proven Recipes and Techniques." The book is scheduled to be released at the end of September - just in time for anglers gathering huge skeins of fall chinook eggs from fish caught in Oregon's coastal tidewaters.

"Egg Cures" (104 pages., $15) is published by Frank Amato Publications, Inc, the Portland-based publisher of "Salmon-Trout-Steelheader" magazine and countless fishing books. It includes step-by-step directions for 27 different ways to cure salmon and steelhead eggs, plus advice on proper handling and correct storage of salmon and steelhead eggs.

The published recipes were selected from among more than 100 that Haugen gathered during interviews with professional fishing guides across the country. The author began the research at the urging of his publisher, Frank Amato.

A Haugen column entitled "A Perfect Cure" that had appeared in Amato's magazine in early 2001 was generating so much reader feedback that Amato realized there was a market for this kind of information. So he urged Haugen to set aside another book project and get to work on egg cures.

As the title of his original column implies, Haugen believed he already had a pretty darn good system for turning salmon and steelhead eggs into bait.

"An Indian gentlemen on the Umpqua River shared it with my grandfather and a friend of his, and it's been catching fish ever since," Haugen said. "I caught my first winter steelhead when I was 4 years old using it."

His research for the book, however, convinced him there is no one "perfect" cure, Haugen said.

"The most important thing I learned while putting together this book is to diversify your cures," he said. "Fish won't react to the same attractant every time, so don't limit yourself to one cure ... find two, three or four cures that you consider worthy of constant use."

It makes sense. After all, fishermen don't always order their eggs scrambled and their omelettes with ham and cheddar cheese. Sometimes over easy sounds better, or a Denver or Greek omelette.

So why wouldn't a fish sometimes find different flavors more to their liking? Things like chocolate syrup, honey, brown sugar, shrimp oil, anise oil, garlic, DMSO, sardine oil, root beer syrup, WD-40, or some of the many other ingredients in which various guides soak their eggs. And then there's the raspberry-flavored Jell-O powder, added to give eggs a deep red hue.

With salmon, however, it's smell rather than taste that triggers a reaction, Haugen said.

"Salmon are just chemical junkies," he said. "Their sense of smell is measured in parts per billion."

That's why some of the most successful guides are fanatical about rubber gloves to avoid contaminating their baits with human scents.

Some smells - like anise oil - tend to attract salmon, while others - like potassium - are reputed to repel them.

Indeed, pure anise oil, which smells like licorice, is the "secret" of the cure recipe Haugen's grandfather learned on the Umpqua. Anise oil has no known relationship to anything that a salmon or steelhead would feed on in nature.

Nobody knows what makes fish react the way they do. But everyone's had the experience of watching someone else catching fish when they're not.

Most likely, Haugen said, "there was something in the coloration or the scent - the chemicals that went into making the cure they used - that triggered a bite."

Several different egg cure mixes are available on the market. And, rather than concocting their cures from scratch, many guides use one or more commercial products as a starting point, adding their own special ingredients to "spice up" their cure.

But the key to a good egg cure starts with the eggs themselves.

"No matter how special your cure, it means nothing if you start with poor quality eggs," Haugen said.

A high-quality skein of eggs is odorless and free of blood.

"The biggest thing people overlook is that as soon as you catch a fish and kill it, from that second on, the eggs start to deteriorate ... It's vital to cure eggs as soon as possible, before they turn color, lose moisture or develop a foul odor."

Haugen recommends that the egg skein be removed from ocean-caught fish within five minutes of the time it's caught. That's because ocean-caught fish have been feeding actively, and "stomach acids and bacterial by-products will escape into the body cavity when the fish is killed, tainting the eggs."

With river-caught salmon or steelhead, however, "the safest way to transport the eggs is to leave them in the fish."

The "ultimate goal" in curing salmon eggs, Haugen said, is to make baits that will hold a scent and a visually attractive color as long as possible and entice fish to bite.

"The longer a scent takes to trail or milk out of the eggs, the better the chance of a fish finding it."

Haugen said he often sees anglers waste the best part of bait by letting their hook dangle in the water as they clean their hands. While they're wiping their hands, the juices are "milking out" of the bait.

"The first three casts, when all the oils and scents are milking out, are the most likely to catch fish," he said.

It's also important to have eggs that will stay on the hook, and some varieties of eggs are better at that than others.

Coho, or silver salmon, eggs "have proven to be the most productive" variety of salmon eggs because "they are at an ideal stage of development, the egg-to-skein ratio is optimal and they have perfect color," Haugen said.

Winter steelhead eggs come next on Haugen's list of favorite main ingredients, followed by spring chinook and then fall chinook.

While the latter have some of the largest skeins of eggs, the eggs themselves are most easily dislodged from the skein membrane.

Fall chinook eggs "make wonderful baits for fishing under a bobber, back-bouncing through deep holes or pulling mud bugs (divers)," Haugen said. "But they don't work worth a darn in rushing riffles."

However, there's a cure for even the largest and loosest of eggs.

"I got a single-egg cure from guys in the Great Lakes area that turns eggs so rubbery you could throw it down on the floor and it would bounce. I couldn't believe it."

Haugen is, however, a believer in the magic of eggs.

"If I was stranded on a river with only one thing to use, it's going to be the eggs," he said, "just because you can fish them so many different ways. You can plunk them, you can drift them, you can back-bounce 'em, you can run 'em off a diver.

Just last week, while filming in Alaska for a television show on the Outdoor Network, Haugen cast to a small school of silver salmon.

"I tried lures, jigs and flies on this fish before switching to cured eggs, which he hammered," he said. "I used specially cured eggs packed with scents and dyed bright red."

Autographed copies of "Egg Cures: Proven Recipes and Techniques" are available by sending $15 plus $3 shipping and handling to: Scott Haugen, P.O. Box 275, Walterville, OR 97489. The book is also available online through: www.Amatobooks.com.

CAPTION(S):

Scott Haugen displays a silver salmon taken last week while filming a TV show in Alaska. He caught the fish with cured eggs. Scott Haugen of Walterville, author of the new book "Egg Cures: Proven Recipes and Techniques," adds ingredients to salmon eggs that will give them the scent and color to serve as bait to attract salmon and steelhead. Fresh cured salmon eggs, a corky and some yarn make an irresistable bait with which to catch salmon and steelhead. NICOLE DeVITO / The Register-Guard The cutline goes in this very spot.