Smoking fresh fish

I have two sessions completed now. The first went pretty well. I put in two fillets of a six-pound splake (like a lake trout) after four hours of brining and they turned out great, ready to eat in about 1 1/2 hours.

Today's session had sophmore jinx all over it. I learned some lessons on five precious fillets:

Lesson #1: Don't smoke in the rain unless you want creosote stains on your meat. Water runs down the chimney. A pot inverted over the chimney helped.
Lesson #2: A wind on the unit, especially a wet wind, and it's hard to keep it warm enough even with 1000 watts of power. The fillets don't dry properly before they cook. Makeshift cardboard and metal shelters work.
Lesson #3: Cookbooks lie. A couple of hours of brine is plenty for these fish. After the recommended sixteen-hour soak the fillets seem too salty and prone to breaking up before they are finished.
Lesson #4. Mothers and spouses also lie. They claim to like the ones from yesterday and the samples from today equally.
Lesson #5: A smoker requires constant attention and most of the time is spent washing dishes.

Anyone else have any smoker advice or experiences to relate?

I got the basic Little Chief smoker. Simple and cheap. My neighbor, a fisherman, just gave me 6 seven pound Chum Salmon. They are OK eating, but not the same as Sockeye - so I smoke them.

Fillet the fish and cut into 4-6" slabs - longer at the tail or thin areas.

I brine for a good 18 - 20 hours, but only use one cup non-iodized salt to 2 Ga water. I also add brown sugar and whatever other spices I want.

Mix brine fish every few hours.

Take out and rinse each piece, then set out for atleast one hour or more. ( By the time I got through all my fish in the smoker the last batch sat out for about 72 hours, it is not warm now though.)

Smoke for 10 - 12 hours with two pans of chips early on. The last 6 hours is really drying time. Leave it in until you are happy with the dryness / moisture.

I keep the smoker under the car port. Lots of air around. This unit really doesnt genorate a lot of smoke.

We then freeze the slabs and take out ars we want them. They seem to be a little mor moist after they thaw.

Grant

So the excessive saltiness might be because of the 10:1 water/salt ratio the cookbook called for rather than the soaking time.

I'll have to learn how to control the heat on the smoker with a few hot smoking sessions before I try a cold-smoking process like what you describe.

Thanks for the advice.

Rod

The first time I tried smoking the fish it was quite salty. I added more salt than I do now ( most recipies I've seen call for 1 cup salt to 1 Ga water plus the brown sugar / coke / beer / wine / spices whatever.)

The recomendation for more salt may be due to the fact that this is what really "cooks / cures" the fish. A big liability I suppose if your fish goes bad and a bunch of people get sick.

Sometimes fish just get salty, maybe due to a higher oil content??? Herring in perticular.

I take a 5 ga pail and put a couple garbage bags in it to hold the brine. When I'm done I dump out the brine, throw the bags out and rince the pail. The smoker has a rack with three wire shelves and a drip catcher. When I'm finished smoking everything, I give the racks/ shelves a quick scrub and into the dishwasher. Rinse off everthing else and back into the box.

One other thing I do sometimes is take the cardboard box that the smoker came in and invert it over the smoker while the chips are smoking. This seems to keep the smoke and heat in a bit better as this unit never really gets hot.

Its a really low maintenance set up. We put the fish in when we head out in the morning. Add another pan of chips at lunch. Check it after dinner- take it out or leave it for another hour or so. Start over the next morning.

We will be finished harvesting Dad's place tomorrow. Then by next weekend we should be done at my farm. I would like to try smoking a goose or duck when we're done. There's enough of them buggers around this year.

Grant

If you'll pardon a slight exaggeration, the flavours were to die for.

More of this will be just fine with me.