Following a late-winter steelhead outing on a Lake Ontario tributary, I was fortunate to bring home a fish literally filled to the gills with roe.
Not about to let this precious bait go to waste and hoping to use it for ice fishing or drifting on my own, I planned to make spawn sacs for the first time. Contributor Luigi De Rose and his keen cousin John De Rose provided all the guidance I needed.
Spoon your eggs off the skein, that sticky membrane that holds them together, onto some paper napkins and dry them off by rolling them around. Don’t worry if you don’t get all the skein off.
Sprinkle borax all over the loose eggs. They should look like powdered donuts.
Let the eggs dry in the fridge on fresh napkins in an open container for a couple of days.
Sprinkle more borax on the eggs before putting them in the freezer in small-portioned glass containers.
Netting is available in pre-cut three- and four-inch squares, or in rolls in a variety of colours. Use Magic Thread, which eliminates knot-tying. Scarfs or other types of mesh often are too much material and don’t look nice in the water.
1. Place a dime- to penny-sized cluster of eggs in the middle of a square of netting. Use nickel-sized clusters for big water, muddy conditions, or greedy trout.
2. (Optional) Anglers planning to use sacs for bottom rig fishing near rivermouths, for example, should add some floaters to each bag to help them float up from bottom. I did some bags with them, with plans to use them for ice fishing at the cottage.
3. Pull the corners together and twist the bag a couple of times. Wrap the top with a half dozen turns of Magic Thread, which stretches and locks.
4. Trim the netting and thread so that you’re left with a neat bag of eggs. Try creating different sizes, depending on your plans.
Store finished sacs in glass jars or air-tight plastic containers and cover them with borax. Roe bags will last for months in the fridge, or even a couple of years in the freezer.
Originally published in the Fall 2024 issue of Ontario OUT of DOORS
