The Origin of The Otter's "Soft Milking Egg"® Products

While on a Great Lakes Steelhead fishing trip, Walt found a molded, opaque fishing egg available in local bait shops. Although the product was not of correct size or color, Walt recognized its potential and located Tom Young, the producer and a man with a lifetime of plastics injection and molding experience. With his assistance and with guidance from Walt, they formed a partnership to develop a new synthetic egg - an imitation that was soft and fully translucent, in colors and sizes that truly mimicked natural eggs. Walt founded Blue River Designs, to develop, produce, and market this new product line, along with Tom's assistance.

real eggs

About The Otter's "Soft Milking Egg"® Products and Fly Patterns

In designing this fly fishing pattern, Walt has duplicated a real trout and salmon eggs that are deposited on the stream bottom by the species. As eggs are laid on the gravel bottom by a female fish, a male of the species darts in and ejects white sperm upon those eggs to fertilize them. This sperm "sticks" to the eggs for a short while, as the eggs drift into the bottom gravels of the stream. Many species of fish will then dart in and eat these freshly laid and fertilized eggs. The white sperm covering and coming off of the eggs in the current triggers a strike from fish eating these eggs. It is a key signal to a fish that the egg is real, and highly prized as food.

Fish of the same and other species will eat these eggs, even in a cannibalistic way. For example, if a brown trout is spawning, other brown trout will eat these eggs, as will rainbow, brook, cutthroat, salmon and other species in the area. Furthermore, these eggs are very soft and fragile. They rupture very easily for the first 10 to 15 minutes in the water, until they slightly harden and set up to a jelly like consistency.

As these eggs are deposited onto the stream bottom, some are actually ruptured and split open, allowing the interior embryo to exude into the water current. This interior contents of the egg exudes as a whitish colored liquid into the current, very similar to the sperm from a male fish. In addition, if one were to impale a fresh egg onto a hook, it would also result in the same occurrence of this whitish liquid exuding into the current.

Soft Milking Egg� fly pattern with real eggs

The conditions described above can result in fish feeding readily upon these "milking" eggs. While there are many other egg patterns on the market, none are "soft and milking." Others are made of hard plastic or epoxy, and do not exhibit the milking characteristic of real fish eggs. The Otter's "Soft Milking Egg"® patterns duplicate real fish eggs when drifting in the water current. Due to numerous species in the rivers, Blue River Designs, developed and created various color and size combinations to duplicate realistic colors for the different species of trout, salmon, and sucker spawn eggs.

For more information, contact:
Blue River Designs, LLC
2287 Shane Ct.
Grand Junction, CO 81507

 

mail@softmilkingegg.com
brdbreck@aol.com

All "Soft Milking Egg"® patterns are registered trademarks of Blue River Designs, LLC.
© 2017 Blue River Designs, LLC
All rights reserved.

Download the Soft Milking Egg� product catalog

Our Brochure is available in PDF format and should load in your web browser. To download, "right click" the link and choose "Save target as." You can view and print PDF files with Adobe® Acrobat Reader, a FREE download at: www.adobe.com.

Professional Associates of Blue River Design

Blue River Design's association with Montana Fly Company (MFC), the initial distributor and tier of his fly patterns, began over 5 years ago, and this strong relationship continues today. Utilizing the expertise of MFC, all Blue River Designs tied egg patterns and egg materials are produced for wholesale distribution into worldwide markets.

In 2008, Blue River Designs also enlisted additional marketing support by allowing Wapsi Fly Company (Wapsi) to wholesale materials to additional fly shops. Wapsi is also recognized worldwide, and contributes to broader distribution of Blue River Design's fine products.

Order Soft Milking Egg� products

Order direct from Blue River Design. Shop at our ONLINE STORE to purchase Materials to tie your own flies, Tied Flies, Hooks, Embryo Egg Glass Beads for "Pegging" Otter's "Soft Milking Eggs", Special Starter Combo Kits, and Accessories. Payment can be made through PayPal's secure shopping cart, using your PayPal account or a major credit card.

Download our "Notes" on Using Otter Egg Materials, a list of helpful product-related tips and information. "Right click" and choose "Save target as" to save and open it on your hard drive.