I started by following the recipe’ I posted last month that is available on the Salmon University website. The dry brine, which by the time I woke up Saturday Morning, had drawn enough liquid from the fillets, to actually become a wet brine. Simple ingredients, 4 cups dark brown sugar, 1 cup kosher salt, and 15 smashed cloves of garlic.

The recipe’ called for a cooking time of 4 to six hours over medium heat, and I checked right at 4 hours. The thicker fillets were perfect, the thinner and leaner tail sections were pretty much like salmon jerky. Still pretty good, jerky is jerky!

For my smoke, I had soaked a combination of hickory and apple chips over night. As wet as it was, it started to smoke a half hour into the cooking process. Two hours in and it was really coming out of the vents.

All the meat came from soaking overnight in a five gallon pickle bucket. Rinsed before putting into the smoker, and made all this.

This is a step by step, link by link procedure in smoking salmon.

How to, and recipe’

Prep for the fish

Brining the fish

Rinse and Dry

Smoking

Finally step, packaging the product

This is an excellent recipe!

Gary Larson’s Brine

10-12 Pounds of Fish
1 Cup Rock or canning salt
5 Cups Water
1 Cup Brown Sugar
½ Cup Johnny’s Seasoning Salt

1. Dissolve ingredients by stirring.
2. Pour over fish and soak at least 6 Hours
3. Remove and rinse through 2 fresh cold water rinses
4. Air dry 3 – 4 Hours
5. Smoke 8 – 10 Hours

going to borrow this report from one of the guys on one the forums, he tells it better than I could write it up!!!!!

 frankfort oct 4,5 smokin hot

The way things are looking this could be the best weekend of the year for fishing the rivers.  Until now it has been hit and miss, but with colder temps this weekend it should send the salmon that have been staging near the mouths of the state’s rivers  up in good numbers.

I have mentioned this before, and its been a while, so will do it again.  Reading some of the fishing forums can  lead to some good tips, and this is really a good case in point.  This is one of the guys, and his trip to the dam recently, where he had hired a guide to show him the ropes on the river.  Which by the way, is an excellent way to learn new waters and effective techniques.

This is Ben, one of the www.fishmichigan.net crowd.  Its a loose assortment of good guys, some nuts, but like I said GOOD PEOPLE.  Who just like the outdoors, and there are skill levels from the beginner to the accomplished in fishing, hunting and trapping who visit there on a regular basis.  There are no rules persay, and you don’t get kicked off for mentioning a non-paying sponor’s product, or telling it how it is about a sponsor’s product.

Ben’s charter was with Full of Hope Charters and his guide was Steve Emery.  Not only was he impressed with Emery’s skill at finding fish, but he learned a lot on the trip as well.  That’s what a good charter captain or guide should be.  Always a bonus, Steve sounds like a pretty good guy as well.  Most of the pics are with Ben on the right or fishing by himself, but the first pic was just a great shot of the mist on the water on the morning they went out just last week.

Frankfort:  Big fish in the 25 and 30 lb range are being caught off the pier with alewives.  Folks are cathing the bait with #10 long shank gold hooks, often without any bait.  Waxies are a good choice, as well as spikes if you have bait, to catch the bait!  Cast nets are another good option for getting all the bait  you need.

Spoons are also taking salmon, but they are tending to run smaller in the 10 to 15 lb range.  Cleo’s, KO Wobblers and Kastmasters are good choices.

If you are looking to try your hand at fishing a tournament for the first time, look up salmon tournaments for Michigan’s West Coast.  There are a number of them left, and some are pretty reasonable considering the payouts that you might earn/win.

Good luck, the fishing should be good and steady from now on.  If you can’t fish the shallows from shore, there are plenty of fish left in the lake, just staging and getting ready to make their runs up the many rivers on that side of the state.

With the cool weather starting earlier this year, the salmon are starting to run in the Lower Peninsula.  Some of the runs in the Upper started to take place a week and half ago,  one night it hit 39 degrees while there.

Reports are coming in that the salmon are in the Manistee in good numbers, but have yet to reach the the first dam in big numbers.  If the weather holds, it shouldn’t take long though.  Look for all rivers north of the Manistee to be getting similar reports as well.

I know one reader is heading up to Oscoda with a box full of Little Cleo’s to fish off the pier.  This is the time of the year folks that the fish will keep running until the primal urge is satisfied, that or a sudden warm spell!

Get your collections of spoons, flies and spawn rigs and head north, time to fill the freezer with the good stuff.