Going to smoke some suckers

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rbranstner

Smoking Guru
Original poster
OTBS Member
Oct 18, 2007
5,698
39
West Fargo, ND / Northern MN
I have a bunch of sucker fish in my freezer from my brother this spring and I was thinking about smoking them. I was going to use my recipe that I normally use on my smoked salmon. It is a mixture of salt, brown sugar and pepper corns. It is really awesome on Salmon but I don't know how it will taste on the suckers as they are kind of a crap fish since they are a bottom feeder and well we all know how good salmon is so I don't think they are in the same league. What do you guys think will it turn out? I was also reading on some other threads that a lot of guyy use a maple glaze this is new to me and I think I will have to give that a try. My salmon usually comes out with a suttle sweet flavor because of the brown sugar but that glaze sounds really good. Maybe I will just experiment and do some of each and see what I like better.
 
good luck with the sucker smoke...

i have smoked perch(made perch jerky), cats, bows, among others but never have smoked suckers(we usually can them - tastes like salmon)
 
Never smoked sucker, but I've eaten a bunch. I know folks "up north" consider bottom feeders rough fish (lived in MN 11 years).
Down in the Ozarks we score them and deep fry. The bones disappear. Some fine eating with a mess of fried taters, little onion in them, some cole slaw, an ice cold beverage.
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This is best prepared on a gravel bar over an open fire along a crystal clear spring fed Ozark stream just after a night of gigging suckers under the light of 3-4 Coleman lanterns hanging from the front of a flatbottom john boat.
Salmon is a different thing.
 
Never ate one but I was wondering how a blacke catfish spice would do on a smoker. Throw em in a hot skillet first to blacken than throw em on the smoker? I love blackened catfish! Garoun-teed!
 
we were raised on suckers from Feb til the middle of April when the water was cold, we had the fish one meal and the row the next meal. Are you going to brine them??
 
We used to bait sucker holes with a cottonseed mill cakes in a croaker sack in the creeks around my FIL house. Brings back a lot of memories. He called them red horse suckers.
 
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