It took Val Perry nearly 30 years to shake loose with one of his most closely guarded scent secrets, but in late February, the veteran Columbia River guide shared a piece of info that should have spring Chinook anglers scurrying to the tackle shop for Pautzke Nectar.
“Pautzke Nectar, to me, is like mother’s milk to salmon and steelhead,” Perry said. “It’s the essence of crushed eggs. Think about that for a second: crushed eggs. Really, is there a more basic scent profile for salmon and steelhead?”
Perry, of course, was referring to the basic component of Pautzke Nectar. The Ellensburg-based company has been the world leader in salmon eggs since 1934, thanks largely to their bright red Balls o’ Fire egg. Nectar is simply the runoff of liquid that occurs during the cooking and curing of Pautzke’s Balls o’ Fire, Yellow Jacket and Orange Deluxe eggs - it’s the essence of egg juice, combined with Dad Pautzke’s patented 75-year-old blend of salts, sugars and seasonings.
Mother’s milk.
“Everything I fish for here in the Pacific Northwest reacts to Nectar’s scent,” Perry pointed out. “Salmon, steelhead, sturgeon, trout … everything.”
That includes Spring Chinook. Perry has been on the leading edge of a growing crowd of springer anglers who utilize the four colors of Pautzke Nectar (red, green, orange and blue) as the base of their herring preparation. Here’s why:
Scent savvy: As mentioned above, Nectar’s scent profile already includes the mother’s-milk mix of egg essences and curing agents, but it’s also boosted by Pautzke’s industry-leading Krill powder. That’s a potent 1-2 punch that Perry further enhances by mixing a slurry of Nectar with different measurements of Pautzke’s Fire Cure or BorX o’Fire cures, some salt and water to create a “herring sourdough” that he’ll use throughout the season for herring (and, for that matter, prawns and anchovies).
“The salt and the different components of the two cures take the scent of the Krill and egg-cooking liquid and force them deep inside the bait,” Perry advises. “It penetrates all the way through the bait instead of just being an outside coating. Depending on whether I want a hotter bait or a softer cure, I’ll mix a cup of Fire Cure of BorX O’ Fire, about ¼ cup of salt, and whatever color of Nectar I want in a gallon of water. I’ll add stuff here and there throughout the season, depending on what color or type of bait I want.”
Killer colors: The second component of the Nectar edge is color. As Perry points out, “When the fishing is red-hot nuclear, almost anything works,” but the bright blue, orange, red and green flash of a Nectar-prepared bait can make a noticeable difference when everybody else is fishing plain herring.
“That color in the Nectar, for me, makes a big difference,” Perry admits. “When I’m out there on a tough bite and I see 1,000 silver herring down there, I know it’s time for me to get my colors on. I can always come up with a few fish when I have that colored herring spinning.”
Blue Nectar has quickly become a staple on the lower Columbia, but depending on water conditions, Perry will run straight red, orange or chartreuse baits, or, in some case, he’ll mix red and chartreuse to create a subtle pinkish bait. He’ll also fill a mason jar halfway with blue or green and soak a previously-treated herring overnight to create a tasty “hot tail” effect.
“Blue is always a great color in that nice, fairly clear, green, low-snow Columbia water, but it all comes down to water color,” Perry says. “I fish smaller rivers, the ocean, tidewater, you-name-it, so it’s always smart to have an array of colors to fish.”
