Bubba, you and the Colonel inspired me to give the smoked catfish a try. I went fishing this week and caught a few out of the pond. I decided to do an experiment and left the skin on some of the fish and took the skin off the others. My daughter had also urged me to smoke some salmon so I decided to kill two birds with one stone.
Since the meat is so delicate I decided to make a 30 degree brine so the fish wouldn't be too salty.
Here is the brine recipe I used.
1 gallon of water
3/4's cup of canning salt (7.7 oz)
1 cup brown sugar
2 TBS Black Pepper
1 tsp of Cayenne Pepper
Soaked the catfish and one salmon in the brine for about six hours. Took fish out and let dry at room temp hoping to form a pellicle for smoking. After taking them out I dusted them lightly with black pepper and chipotle pepper. Ok, maybe it wasn't so lightly. I like things zesty.
I smoked the fish in a heavy pecan smoke at 175F till the flesh became flakey. Note: It would be a good idea to arrange fillets by size since the larger ones take a longer to cook.
The finished product was outstanding. The saltiness from the weak brine was dead on and I believe soaking them longer would have had no ill effects on the flavor. I won't be leaving the skin on them next time though cause the skin tended to stick to the rack moreso than the flesh itself and cleanup was a pain. Of course, next time I will definitely use some cooking spray like Pam.
The resulting fish was fantastic. I will be doing this again and like BigGuy said, its better than salmon. I don't think you could go wrong by trying this recipe. Oh, and to me, they are even better once they've cooled and sat in the fridge overnight. I had them for breakfast and they are now all gone so its back to the pond.
Thanks for the inspiration. It was well worth the trouble.