ideal herring size for bait?

I've seen some videos on herring fishing, and they have suggested there are ideal sizes of herring for different target species, and they throw back ones that are too large (or small, I suppose).

Since I don't want to use good sized fish bait for crab bait, what are the ideal sizes for the different target fish?
Salmon, halibut, rockfish, lingcod?

I've seen some videos on herring fishing, and they have suggested there are ideal sizes of herring for different target species, and they throw back ones that are too large (or small, I suppose).

Since I don't want to use good sized fish bait for crab bait, what are the ideal sizes for the different target fish?
Salmon, halibut, rockfish, lingcod?

Salmon may be the only picky ones on size...the fat ones can be mooched...everything smaller than the fat ones are general bait size.  Look at a package of green label herring and go from there...

We got a lot of everything this year. These 4 to 5 inchers are good salmon baits all day. 5 to 6 for hali and late season salmon hawgs, and the 7+ for lings, crabs, and humans.   these are from Monday. Yesterday it was poppin and got on em too

Generally what people are talking about:

Black = 8” and bigger
Purple = 7-8”
Blue = 6-7”
Green = 5-6”
Red = 4-5”
Orange <4”

Red and green are salmon bait.   Blue and up are lingcod and halibut bait. Sort by size when bagging them up and use a correctly colored sharpie to write the year on the vacuum bag.