How do you prepare your meat?

[tgafish]

I've used fire brine, John Kings borax and salt method, added brightner sometimes, added garlic sometimes.  I've used variations of all in between.  When it's hard to find cut strips I have no problem fileting my own but I just do not seem to have the success that others have running the same programs. I have not tried Big weenie brine yet but I can't imagine it would make that much of a difference.  Anybody have some thoughts on this?

[jdh]

What aren't you having success with?  The meat firming up OR the fish biting them?  In terms of getting fish to bite - i've had extremely mixed results.  It seems like the familial bite strips and my own alewife strips have performed the best for me.  Not had good success with other methods.

[tgafish]

3 hours ago, jdh said:

What aren't you having success with?  The meat firming up OR the fish biting them?  In terms of getting fish to bite - i've had extremely mixed results.  It seems like the familial bite strips and my own alewife strips have performed the best for me.  Not had good success with other methods.

Getting bites.  I check for a good roll and have gotten bit in past years but there seems to be a lot of guys getting bit before the sun goes down on meat and I haven't been touched.  All my bites are coming on spoons even though I'm running 2-4 meat rigs out of 6 lines all evening long.

[coralee]

Not sure why but the familiar bite strips seem to be soft this year (I keep them frozen till use). They are limp in the bait heads and the roll is poor or even nonexistent sometimes but the bait head rolls fine without meat. Not sure if I've gotten a bad batch or what but the soft stuff doesn't seen to work as well. I'm looking for alternatives like a place that has fresh red or green for sale. 

[gmfishon]

can't help with the brine question. As far as soft or nothing than 100 % quality meat with the proper roll dont run it. Make it right or don't run. You could be shutting down a bait near it.

[Martin1950]

Mr. Tom,

You know how I brine my Ales, on several occasion I've found that changing the color of the meat from natural to sparkly green or blue can be the only change you need.  But then again I'm using whole baits.  Have you ever tried running a meat strip sushi fly?

Martin 

[tgafish]

Bob I tried to run my A side fillets with the backbone in and the backbone out just to see if that made a               difference.  Martin I have some blue colored fire brine on order.  I'll see what comes of that.  Last time I was at Rays they had some very good looking blue label in the freezer