Whitefish smoker recipes

[SHAWDAWG]

Caught some nice whitefish at bear lake today was looking to smoke them. does anybody have a good smoker recipe they would like to share?
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[Old_Coot]

Oh YEA!

I just smoked ten of them myself and I simply followed BearLakeFishGuy's YouTube video on smoking Bear Lake whitefish. Turned out EXCELENT!

Here is that video:

[url "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBTptFyfe3c"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBTptFyfe3c[/url]

In the video, Scott displays the brine recipe. But I talked to him personally and he has changed his recipe just slightly since the video. I am attaching his refined brine recipe to this post.

Also, it wasn't too long ago where we had a fair amount of discussion here on BFT about smoking Bear Lake whitefish. Here is that thread:

[url "http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=906781;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed"]http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=906781;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed[/url]

Shaw, when did you catch the whitefish and how many did you get, where, lures, etc. Would love to know.
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[SHAWDAWG]

Thanks for the help. Yes we fished the east side off of cisco beach area. We found most of the fish in the 8 to 12 ft deep but did catch a couple shallower. I dont have a motor on my boat so we were just trolling so we didnt go too far from cisco beach. We were using white curly tail jigs 3 to 4". We tried other colors as suggested by others on here but only caught fish on white. We caught fish casting towards shore and bouncing the jigs back but found with the strong wind and waves it was hard to feel bites so we started vertical jigging beneath the boat and caught at least half our fish that way. We had lots of fun. We ended up with 10 whitefish, a 24" cutthroat and an 8 pound laker.
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[wagdog]

I haven't tried Scott's recipe yet but I will give it a whirl one of these days. I typically use a dry cure for fish. I like it because it works well on fresh fish or fish that have been frozen and thawed. This is very similar to TubeDude's quick cure because I learned it from him. I have played with it a little and developed my own variation on TD's theme. The base is 4 parts brown sugar to one part kosher salt. Stay away from the iodized stuff since it will give the fish a funky metallic taste. You can also split the sugar into half granulated white sugar and half brown sugar. Just keep the ratios the same. For about 10 pounds of fillets I mix 4 cups of brown sugar with 1 cup of kosher salt. Then I add about a tablespoon of garlic powder and maybe 2 teaspoons of onion powder. Mix thoroughly. I then layer my fish in a plastic or other nonreactive container. One layer of fish. Sprinkle the cure generously. Add another layer of fish and repeat. Cover the container with a lid and refrigerate overnight. A brine will develop as moisture is pulled from the fish. See TD's writeup on smoking catfish and you will see what I mean. I move the fillets around in the brine every 4 to 6 hours to make sure they are all getting equal treatment. Remove them from the cure and either give them a quick rinse with cold water or just pat off the excess with paper towels. Let them sit out to dry and form a pellicle for one to two hours. Smoke with your favorite wood. I like alder and hickory. TD has a great write up on smoking whitefish that he posted a few days ago. His super spice mix is what I use to add some flavor and heat to all the fish I smoke. My family loves it. Good luck!
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[SHAWDAWG]

Well i tried the recipe that Old Coot posted on here. Wow it is good. The whitefish came out great. I also pressured canned the smoked fish after to dissolve the bones and these things are delicious. no bones and great flavor.
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