Northern Pike

[Northern_Smoke]

Well after working 7-7, 7 days a week since April I finally took half a day off and went fishing. The spot i picked was pretty productive. We caught allot of small jacks in the 1-1.5 pound range is they were put back to be caught on another day. I did decide to keep just one 1.5-2 pounder because I have been wanting to try and smoke a white meat fish for a while now. I looked around for a recipe and came up with brown sugar and I used lawry's seasoning salt instead of plain salt along with some garlic and onion powder and old bay spice. Put the dry rub on the de-boned and clean filets and left sit in the fridge for 12 hours. I rinsed them and smoked them at 120 for 1.5 hours with no smoke and then bumped it up to 175 for 3 hours with cherry. I must say that I really like the flavor and texture. This is a keeper that I plan on doing again. Since we are landlocked with no oceans which means no salmon, I gotta make due with what we can catch.

[Carter]

Nothing like a day of catching small, aggressive Pike.  I love casting a Mepps Cyclops for those guys.  What do you use? 

Good looking recipe.  I'll have to give that a try sometime.  Thanks for sharing.

Carter (in T.O.)

[Northern_Smoke]

Well that day they were hitting on small pike looking lures. I threw out everything I had and they were quite aggressive with that one. Some guys down from member having luck with just a pickeral rig and Leaches.

[ExpatCanadian]

I was just up fishing on Lac Des Isles in Meadow Lake Park, Saskatchewan a few weeks back and had decided to try the same thing....  smoked jackfish.  I just used a 50:50 mix of brown sugar and pickling salt in water for about 3 hours.... and then left the fillets to dry for another hour or so under a mesh tent to keep the flys off.  It was quite breezy that day, so they dried fairly quickly.  I used the BPS and hit them with an hour of apple smoke and finished them to quite a dry texture.... I only used the smoke generator flame...  no additional burner on.

They turned out pretty good...  certainly a hit with my Mom & Dad, the 6 fillets I did lasted only a few hours.  My only complaint is that they are bony little fellows...  I hadn't done a particularly good job with the filleting knife, so we were picking bones out of our teeth every bite!

Still think I prefer them dredged in flour and fried in butter fresh out of the water though  ;)

[Northern_Smoke]

I have to agree that dredging them and frying them is still the best way to go. But I wouldn't argue if I had to do a few smoked ;)

I watched a few videos on YouTube for filleting them Boneless and it was a huge help. Once you learn to do them boneless you wont mind keeping a few and they taste better haha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBFrQ5KMIs8&sns=em

[Bavind]

I did some just using a brine for half an hour then smoked with alder for a couple of hours. Fantastic taste.