Cured Prawns Bag Second Season Springers Leave a reply

Early in the run Bill Swann of Swanny’s Fishing was fishing cut plug herring and knocking the daylights out of Chinook below the I-5 bridge on the Columbia near Portland. Now that the lower river is closed, however, Bill has shifted into switch-a-rooni mode and his bait cooler holds something else besides herring.

The same herring that worked early in the season are only working about fifty percent of the time on Drano, where’s Bill’s fishing right now, and he’s getting the other half on trolled prawns. 

Once the fish get above Bonneville Dam and begin holding in areas like Drano Lake, Wind River, and The Dalles, cured prawns become a mainstay and draw as many bites, if not more, than anything else.

What’s the secret to curing prawns?  “Swanny” was kind enough to tell me most, but not all, of his secrets.

“I used to cure my prawns in a mixture of two cups of sea salt, one cup of sugar, one cup of borax, and two quarts of water. I’d add pink, dark pink, or purple dye to this mixture along with my scents and leave them in the mixture for about 48 hours, and they’d be ready to go. Nowadays its way easier, as I just use Pautzke’s Fire Cure on the prawns and don’t need to mess with mixing up my own ingredients”, says the veteran river guide.

Bill recommends keeping the amount of sulfite cure used on the prawns light, as adding too much cure to the prawns damages the shell and causes the head to become hollow. “Once the head is hollow it just falls off, so you’ve got to be careful to not add too much of the Fire Cure to your prawns,” Bill says about the effect of the cure on the prawns.

He places approximately 20 prawns in a Tupperware container, sprinkles the desired amount of cure on the prawns, and then adds enough water to just cover them before sealing the lid on the container. He turns the container every six hours for approximately 48 hours, draining the juice off the prawns at the end of the process. The prawns are then layered in another Tupperware container, covered with rock salt, layered again and covered with rock salt, repeating the process until the container is fully layered. Kept cool, the prawns will last up to three weeks using this process.

While the curing process is quite easy, the trick comes in the additives. Bill will cure as many as five different batches or prawns with krill, mysis shrimp, shrimp and anise, garlic, and a product called Fool-a-Fish.  Fool-a-Fish is a liquid that contains ultraviolet enhancing crystals that make the prawns more visible in low light conditions. These additives go in the cure early and are absorbed by the prawns during the process.

In addition to the different scent additives Bill will also use pink, dark pink, and purple dyes in his cure, explaining that each color will work better than others on certain days. Bill further explained, “When I’m fishing four rods I’ll usually have something different on each rod and if one starts getting bit regularly I will switch the other rods out to that scent and color combo.”

Once in the water “Swanny” wants all four prawns to spin differently and will rig them accordingly to get the right amount of spin, or no spin at all. “Some years getting them to spin like a bullet is the trick, but other years you want them about dead still in the water, with no spin. It’s just a matter of experimenting and seeing what they want,” says Swann. 

Bill runs a double hook rig and uses the small rubber bands used in the dental industry to hold the head to the trailing hook.

To reduce spin and keep the prawns running straight he will add a small diameter toothpick to the bait, piercing it thru the tail and running it thru the body as carefully as possible, so as not to damage the shell.

The "Drano 500" is in full swing right now and while the bite has definitely see sawed up and down quite a bit lately fishing should only improve in the coming weeks as spring Chinook continue to spill over Bonneville dam in huge numbers. Add a batch of Swanny's cured prawns to your cooler before targetting second season springers. You never know when they might save the day!