The Secret To The Sound Leave a reply
Add Green To Your Diet!
By Chris Shaffer | 08/05/2012
Those of us fortunate to know Pautzke pro staffer and Outdoor Line co-host Duane Inglin on a personal level know nothing excites him more than being in “The Bait Lab” which has taken over a portion of his garage.
Knowing this, it was no surprise the Inglin arrived almost 30 minutes late to pick me up at the new Sea-Tac car rental facility two weeks ago.
“Sorry Shaf, I was doing some mixing. We are running herring in the morning and this bait is going to be awesome,” he told me, while opening the cooler and lifting a Ziploc bag filled with what looked like antifreeze.
I’m accustomed to seeing Inglin show me wild color combinations and wasn’t surprised to see this, even though we didn’t sell a green Nectar or Fire Brine. It’d been a year since we last made green Kokanee Fuel and I figured Inglin again had his measuring cups and Tupperware out. His drive to remain a leading Mixologist continues to burn.
“Do you see this green?” he asked me. “You like that, huh?”
Inglin had made the green herring and anchovies to be drug in the Puget Sound the following morning when we met Inglin’s co-host and saltwater guru Tom Nelson. The herring and anchovies were brought to imitate candlefish, the salmon’s main food source right now in The Sound, Nelson said.
“I don’t care what you are running in regards to hardware, it’s never going to be as effective as bait,” Nelson told me.
While lures remain common having a good looking bait is tough to beat.
“Anchovy are a soft belly bait and they like to blow out so a lot of guys don’t run them, but we brine them up with the Pautzke’s Fire Brine, which does a real nice job at firming them up, plus it has the UV properties, which is real important when you get those baits down,” Inglin added. “We’ve also done the same with red label herring.”
Inglin later revealed he mixed chartreuse and blue Fire Brine to achieve the perfect green.
“The key to successful bait trolling is having a tough and dependable herring down there and Fire Brine does that,” noted Nelson.
It proved to be our recipe to success that day.
And, it could be yours, too.
Editor’s Note: Co-hosts Duane Inglin and Tom Nelson can be heard on The Outdoor Line Saturday mornings on ESPN Radio 710 in Seattle. This week, Inglin’s newest Fire Blog will explain how to make your own green herring/anchovy.
