Archive for September, 2009

Keep it simple. Keep only the best quality fish. Fresh run steelhead, the dime bright silver ones to maybe a little rainbow color starting to show. Use a dry brine for best cure, not a water brine. Try to avoid flavors and spices until you master the smoking process. Filet fish and leave skin on.

1/2 cup coarse kosher salt, 1 cup dark brown sugar. Mix thoroughly. Place half of mixture on foil the length of the filet and put fish on salt and sugar skin side down. Coat top of filet with rest of mixture. Wrap in foil, then wrap in plastic wrap until sealed. This will keep your fridge clean and ensure a good cure. Allow fish to cure for 12-48 hours. 1 day is about right.

Take fish out of foil and rinse off remaining cure under water. Place on counter and dry with paper towels. Let air dry for a half hour more while setting up smoker. Place fish in smoker and keep temperature from 150-185 degrees. Anything over that and your fish starts to cook. You want fish to smoke and dry properly, if it cooks it will not do this. Allow filet to smoke for 4-8 hours, depending on how dry you like your fish. I find that 6-8 is optimum. Hickory, Alder, Apple, and even Mesquite are good choices for wood.

Just did my first one of the season and the picture should illustrate proper color, texture, and overall look of final product. Only about half of this filet made it to the fridge in the foil!

Besides eating plain try with cream cheese and crackers, or mix into a dip, spread, or patte and put on bagels, toast, baguettes, or in pastas and omelettes.

I could post numerous recipes but would’nt have enough room. Get creative or go simple and mix into some cream cheese with fresh chives and find out how many people will need you to bring home more fish to fill the table at football parties.

Next recipe post: Gravlax

Not a great increase in numbers of fish from last week, and fishing was slow, even in the AM. Fished Walnut until around noon, probably a few hours too long. Fish not extremely aggressive, just a few landed, and a few more lost. Very light bites on mostly Flatfish lures. No takers on jigs. A lot depended on where you were, most active fish trying to enter main body of stream, and a fly angler did well there. Fish have taken a beating from fishermen, warm water is not helping their attitudes.

Fished Elk and 20 for short periods, found fish at Elk that were semi active. Couple more landed there. 20 mile had fish roaming the shorelines, but not many. Nothing to speak of in stream. Casted at mouth of 20 and other mile streams, lake turned choppy and cloudy as the day wore on. No fish hooked up in lake.

Slow day, need rain, need cooler temps for more fish to come in and for fish in the streams to move past low access areas.

Still a good amount of fish for this early. If making the trip fish early, and spend the afternoon casting at mouths and scouting other creeks. Lots of changes in some of the streams from summer storms.

That first 5 seconds when you see the fish hit your lure, and it goes airborn, then takes off anywhere and you’re just trying to keep up….that’s the 5 seconds I do this for. 5 seconds of chaos before you get back under control. In those 5 seconds you see either an experienced fisherman become a robot and do what needs to be done to keep the fish on the line, or you see some guys melt like butter in a sauce pan of confusion, and the fish is lost. In the end, fishermen spend years to take control of those first 5 seconds. Become a machine or lose. Detect strike, set the hook, rod tip up, drag perfectly set, fish takes line, rod tip back down on jumps, regain line, and it’s all gravy from there to the net. We can prepare all we can to get into fish with the right equipment and lures/baits/flies, but if we can’t control those first few seconds of hooking into the fish of a lifetime, all of the preparation won’t land a fish. Know your equipment, know your own movements when you fight a fish, and know how to react to what a fish is doing on the end of your line. Then there will be plenty of time for pictures.