Smoked Wild Trout

bufo55

New member
There's a secret lake in the Sierras where I catch Golden-Rainbow hybrids. They get FATTY and RED from gorging on Copepods (crustaceans kind of related to krill - if you know any cartoon-watching kids, they might know that Plankton, one of Spongebob Squarepants' friends, is a copepod of a salt-water variety). When you clean them they are full of gobs of orange fat - fattier than most ocean-caught wild salmon. Twelve mile hike, 3,000 ft elevation gain, 6 miles of it cross-country and up a cliff. Then hike back with them packed in snow.

I smoked the big one, and threw in some salmon bellies from the local fishmonger.  Used an equilibrium brine, supplemented with soy, fresh ginger, garlic cloves and sugar for that teriyaki taste. The equilibrium brine worked great on the trout, but those fatty salmon bellies actually need a dry rub-which I will do next time.  I often get interrupted, so the time flexibility of the equilibrium brine is great. I left it in at least 8 hours longer than I planned with no ill effects.  Used sugar maple and some cherry, split down about french-fry size to make sure they would smoke at a 140F smoker temp. Put the Maverick probe in a salmon belly and pulled at 140F. Trout was juicy, fatty, just the right amount of smoke, salt and flavoring. Salmon bellies - need some major adjustments.

 

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Nice job Steve. I used to love smoking the red meat trout from Eagle Lake, best tasting trout ever. I don't even waste my time smoking white meat planters.
 
OMG my mouth is watering over the fatty trout! And salmon bellies, my favorites! Did you snack on the heads?
 
I've heard about Eagle Lake rainbows, only been there once years ago and saw one guys amazing catch, but didn't have time to try.

I usually pick the tasty cheeks out of the heads, but with this one, once I started digging into the head I was sucking out everything but bone - cheeks, eye muscles, eyeballs, brain  :P
 
bufo55 said:
I usually pick the tasty cheeks out of the heads, but with this one, once I started digging into the head I was sucking out everything but bone - cheeks, eye muscles, eyeballs, brain  :P

Former Seal or Ranger, or other form of Snake Eater?  Man, that's HARD CORE!  Dang... :o 
 
Nope, just a little old Asian man that's been fishing and hiking since I could walk. I did eat a rattlesnake once. I killed one with a shovel while working on a backcountry trail maintenance crew many years ago. The crew chief made me skin and cook it as "punishment."  I enjoyed it so much he was asking me for some.  ;D
 
That's looks fantastic,  I smoke a lot of trout  and kokanee salmon but have never smoked the belly.... am I missing  out on something tasty?
 
Tough enough, in my book, Steve!  Funny thing about snakes...  When I was going through survival training in the Air Force, a hawk dropped a really big gopher snake right in front of us starving airmen!  He was really pissed when when we grabbed it!  We cooked it, with no seasoning whatsoever.  It was like rubber, and tasted really bland, but we were so hungry we didn't care! 
 
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