How to Brine Herring — The 45-Minute Pro-Cure Method

Brined herring catches more salmon than any other bait in the Pacific Northwest. The reason isn’t mystical — it’s mechanical. Raw herring shreds on the second strike, leaks scent for twenty minutes and goes inert, and won’t hold a dye. Properly brined herring lasts six to ten hookups, throws an amino-acid halo for the whole troll, and carries a UV signature that holds through a stained tide. This is the Pro-Cure method, the same one our pro staff has been running out of Salem, Oregon since 1984.

This guide covers why brining is the most important pre-trip prep most herring anglers skip, the forty-five-minute Brine N’ Bite recipe step by step, plug-cut herring prep, whole herring prep, the Bad Azz UV color add-on system, and the storage rules that decide whether your bait fishes hot or dead by lunchtime.

If you want the broader theory behind brining all bait, jump to our field guide on brining bait. This piece zooms in on herring specifically.

Why brine herring at all?

Herring is the king-salmon prey species across the Pacific Coast. Raw herring fished off the dock catches fish — sometimes. Brined herring fished off the dock catches more fish, more consistently, and stays alive in your bag for longer.

Toughness

A herring that hasn’t been brined is held together by water. Salt-cure that herring and the cell walls tighten, the scales lock down to the skin, and the bait stops shredding on the bite. Brined herring lasts six to ten hookups. Raw herring lasts one. That difference alone pays for the bottle of Brine N’ Bite on every trip.

Scent retention

This is the part most anglers don’t connect. The amino-acid load that triggers a salmon strike has to come out of the bait into the water column. From a raw herring, the amino acids leach out fast — bloom in ten minutes, dead in twenty. From a brined herring, the salt-and-scent matrix in Brine N’ Bite sits inside the flesh and releases slowly — an active scent halo that lasts the whole troll. Same bait, different chemistry, different result.

Color and UV retention

Spray UV dye on raw herring and it sluffs off in the first half-hour of trolling. Stir UV dye into the brine before the bait goes in and the dye particles ride the salt into the cell. Now the UV signature is part of the bait, not painted onto it. Pro-Cure’s Bad Azz Powder Bait Dye is built specifically for the in-brine application — one teaspoon per quart of brine and you’ve got bait that carries color all day.

The 45-minute Brine N’ Bite recipe

This is the workhorse recipe for cocktail-size herring (3 to 5 inch baits). Larger herring — blueback, green-label, jumbo — need ninety minutes to overnight; see the section below.

1. Start with cold, never-thawed herring. Plate-frozen at the dock is the gold standard. If your herring has thawed in transit, brine it immediately — do not refreeze and re-brine. Soft thawed bait does not come back.
2. Mix the brine. One packet Brine N’ Bite Salmon per quart of cold water. Add one cup non-iodized salt (kosher or pickling) and a half-cup non-iodized sugar. Stir until everything is fully dissolved — no grit on the bottom of the bowl.
3. Add UV dye (optional but recommended). Stir in one teaspoon of Bad Azz Powder Bait Dye in your target color — Metallic Blue for clear water and kings, Brilliant Red for stained or low light. The dye dissolves into the brine.
4. Submerge the bait. Lay the herring in flat. Bait floats — weight it down with a small plate or a ziplock filled with water. Every herring needs to be fully submerged. A floating herring brines on one side and not the other and fishes like a banana.
5. Set the timer for 45 minutes. Cocktail-size herring (3 to 5 inch) brine in 45 minutes at refrigerator temp or below 75°F room temp. Over-brining turns the flesh chalky; under-brining gives you a soft bait.
6. Rack and drain. Pull each herring out and lay it on a wire rack over a sheet pan. Rest ten minutes. This is the step most anglers skip — it’s also the step that determines whether your bait bag floods with brine in the cooler or stays dry.
7. Bag and refrigerate. Ziplock, expel the air, refrigerate. Use within four days for maximum scent retention. Day five fishes; day seven doesn’t.

The one-bottle herring brine: Brine N’ Bite — Salmon Flavor. Pre-tuned salt-and-amino-acid balance, UV-charged, no measuring spreadsheet.

Plug-cut herring prep

Plug-cut herring is the classic king salmon trolling bait. The cut puts the bait on a tight roll behind a flasher and exposes raw flesh that releases scent harder than whole bait. To prep plug-cut from a brined herring:

1. Start with whole herring brined ninety minutes to overnight in Brine N’ Bite Salmon — longer brine for plug-cut bait, because the cut face needs the cure all the way through the flesh.
2. Lay the herring flat on a cutting board.
3. Make a beveled cut behind the gill plate, angling down toward the belly. Standard cut: 30 to 45 degrees off vertical — the steeper the bevel, the tighter the spin.
4. Remove the head and the inside gills. Leave the belly intact.
5. Rinse the cut face briefly under cold water to flush belly fluid — do not scrub off the salt halo on the outside of the bait.
6. Drop the plug-cut herring into a ziplock with a five-second dunk in Salmon Slammer Bait Oil before rigging. The cut face takes the oil and you’ve got a bait throwing two amino-acid sources at once — the brine inside, the oil outside.

Spin test the first bait of the day. Hold the rigged plug-cut at the rod side at troll speed for thirty seconds. You want a tight, even roll — one full rotation every six to twelve inches. A loose lazy spin means the bevel is too shallow; re-cut. A wobble means the leader and hooks aren’t centered; re-rig.

Whole herring prep

Whole herring — rigged on a herring helmet, a dodger-fly trailer, or a mooching rig — needs the same brine but a different prep at the rod.

1. Brine cocktail or blueback herring per the 45-minute or 90-minute schedule.
2. At the boat, rig the herring through the nose with the leading hook and through the upper back with the trailing hook. For mooching, both hooks set to give the bait a tight forward roll on the slow lift.
3. Five-second dunk in Salmon Slammer Bait Oil before deploy.
4. Smear Salmon Super Gel on the back third of the bait between drops — this is the refresh layer that keeps the scent halo strong after the first thirty minutes.

Whole-herring presentations call up more aggressive fish — they read as “intact prey” in the column. Plug-cut reads as wounded. Both have their day; both fish better off a properly brined bait.

Bad Azz UV color additions

This is the visibility layer. Bad Azz Powder Bait Dye comes in a deep palette and the application is always in-brine, never spray-on. The rules of thumb:

• Metallic Blue — clear ocean water, sunny days, king salmon. The natural fish-back color, amplified for UV vision.
• Brilliant Red — stained water, low light, dawn and dusk. Reads as injured baitfish.
• Chartreuse — coho, pinks, tidewater chinook. Loud color for visual species.
• Pink — coho, pinks, summer steelhead-zone herring. Subtle UV pop without screaming.
• Purple — deep-water and overcast specialty color. Reads as silhouette plus UV signature.

Application: one teaspoon of Bad Azz Powder Bait Dye per quart of brine, stirred in until fully dissolved before bait goes in. For a heavier color load, bump to a heaping teaspoon. Don’t exceed two teaspoons per quart — you’re wasting product, not getting brighter bait.

Want to layer colors? Brine half your bait in Metallic Blue and half in Brilliant Red. On a slow day, the boat that has both colors in the bag finds out faster which the fish want.

The UV color kit for herring: Bad Azz Powder Bait Dye Metallic Blue · Bad Azz Powder Bait Dye Brilliant Red. Two-color kit covers ninety percent of West Coast water.

Storage rules

• Refrigerate, never refreeze. A brined bait that’s been refrozen comes back as a wet rag. Fridge only.
• Four days max at proper fridge temp (38°F or colder).
• Multi-day trip trick: ziplock + dry paper towel + frozen gel pack in a hard cooler buys you seven days of fishable bait.
• Heat is the enemy. A bag of brined herring in a sunny boat box for four hours is done. The amino acids cook off. Keep the bait shaded.
• Don’t wash the salt halo off. The white film on the outside of the bait is the scent halo — that’s working for you.

The bottom line

Brining herring is the cheapest, highest-leverage prep step in salmon fishing. Forty-five minutes, one bottle of Brine N’ Bite, and your bait outfishes raw herring by a factor that’s impossible to ignore. Add the Bad Azz UV color in-brine, drain, refrigerate, and you’ve got bait that’s tougher, scent-loaded, UV-charged, and ready to fish hot from launch to take-out.

For the salmon-specific scent stack that goes on top of brined herring, see our best scent for salmon fishing guide. For the broader brining theory across all bait, see the brining field guide.

Real Bait. Made in the USA. Proven Results.

Shop the herring brining kit → Brine N’ Bite Salmon · Bad Azz Metallic Blue · Bad Azz Brilliant Red · Salmon Slammer Bait Oil

Frequently asked questions