Brining fresh herring for salmon bait

Can someone please point me to a simple recipe for brining fresh-caught herring to freeze for later use as salmon bait?

And should I fire brine at the same time, or wait and do it the night before fishing?
Thanks!
Andrew

I follow the salmon university recipe for for brining with good results even though it is designed for brining commercially purchased tray bait.

It’s probably more important to try to retain the scales than it is to brine before freezing. Salted ice water in the cooler goes a long way to calming them down and retaining scales.

I also make a point to sort by size. It’s more work up front but it’s nice to be able to grab the green and blue label herring without the giant ones mixed in, and the last few years most of the catch for me has been large purple and black.

In my experience a vacuum sealer is key. If you don’t have a vacuum sealer you can just fill a 5 gallon bucket with water and dip your ziploc bag full of brined fish into the bucket so that the water pushes the air out of the ziploc bag

I use Pautzke Bait Fire Brine that come in a 32oz bottle and different colors. Soak them in a 5 gallon bucket with this suff for 12-24 hours. Just be careful with them so u dont loose scales. I get the best results with green and the blue color but red has worked pretty good also. Then I do what others said and sort them by size and carefully vacuum seal them. Try to save some trays from guys that buy them and reuse them to help keep your bait looking good.

I use Pautzke Bait Fire Brine that come in a 32oz bottle and different colors. Soak them in a 5 gallon bucket with this suff for 12-24 hours. Just be careful with them so u dont loose scales. I get the best results with green and the blue color but red has worked pretty good also. Then I do what others said and sort them by size and carefully vacuum seal them. Try to save some trays from guys that buy them and reuse them to help keep your bait looking good.

I found the trays at smart and final.

I use Pautzke Bait Fire Brine that come in a 32oz bottle and different colors. Soak them in a 5 gallon bucket with this suff for 12-24 hours. Just be careful with them so u dont loose scales. I get the best results with green and the blue color but red has worked pretty good also. Then I do what others said and sort them by size and carefully vacuum seal them. Try to save some trays from guys that buy them and reuse them to help keep your bait looking good.

I found the trays at smart and final.

I never thought about looking there. Deffently would be better to get them unused. After a day on the water with someone that is doesent care about the trays, they tent to be jacked up some lol.