Ok... first ever batch of smoked salmon, and second ever smoked anything. :^) (MES 30")
I live in Alaska, where wild salmon is very abundant this time of year. In the past, I've always just gone down to the local stream, caught my two or three and called it a day - had one for dinner, froze the others for dinners later. Do this a few times over the summer.
This year, my wife and I decided we wanted a bit more salmon due to a diet change, so we participated (our first time) in the famous Alaskan residents-only dipnet fishery.... you just plunge in a 5ft net, scoop them out of the water, and fill up your freezer. It's not QUITE that easy - we took about 20 fish in 5 or 6 hours on the water (put a couple of rangy ones back), but that's still averaging 1 fish every 15 minutes or so. Our biggest rookie mistake was only bringing one net to share - if we were both out in the water at the same time, we might have doubled that take. We ended up with 8 sockeye (we call 'em "reds"), 4 coho (call em "silvers") and 4 pinks (call em "pinks").
Anyway.... for my first batch of smokers, I decided to try one each of red, silver, and pink for comparison. Followed Bear's recipe almost to the tee (I was out of onion powder and didn't have hickory, so I started on Alder wood and moved to Apple wood). The other deviation was the age of the fish - I processed and froze these on the same day that we caught them (last Tuesday), and then I thawed out the 3 for smoking on Friday morning for brining/drying for a Saturday smoke. Bear's comments about parasites (cook to high temp, OR freeze for 30 days) didn't worry me too much, as other conversation in this thread and my own research led me to believe that fresh, wild Alaska salmon is not at the same risk. (let's hope that's right) :^)
Despite those 3 minor variations, the final result was still FANTASTIC! Thanks for putting this together!!
As for the comparison: I've always liked Reds the best for dinner, and they still won the taste test out of the smoker... but it was a close call. The pinks and the silvers have a bit of a lower fat content, so they were done much sooner. The pinks, with the lowest fat content of all, were finishing up right at about 4 hours, the silvers 4.5-5 hours, and the reds went a full 6 hours.
I also had a similar problem brought up by others throughout this thread: the lack of visible smoke at low temps. But, I just slugged on through it, and stuck to the timing and tempo laid out on page 1. Still tastes GrrrrrrrEEEAAAT! (As tony the tiger liked to say)
Here's a few pics of my efforts:
The missus taking her turn on the dipnet. This is high tide at the mouth of the Kenai River, so we were able to spread back out. At low tide, it was elbow to elbow - what we call "combat fishing".
Out of the brine, onto the racks, ready to sit in the fridge overnight. from left to right: Reds, Silvers, Pinks, medium chunk rack, thick chunk rack. A third rack with the thin tail pieces is already in the fridge.
After about 90 minutes and not much smoke, I had to check the chip pan as I was turning up the temp for the second time. Just starting to smolder.
Final product, cooling down before going in to the fridge. A few pieces have already jumped out of the bowls and into my mouth - that's how fresh those fish were! Imagine my surprise when those things were jumping like that! :^) Reds on top, silvers to the left, pinks to the right.
In conclusion.... I had one "issue" that I'm not sure if I dealt with correctly or not. At about 4 hours, when some of the pieces were starting to reach 145*IT, I began checking the other pieces more and more frequently. This meant opening the door more and more. I would take the rack out, check a few temps, remove those that were done, and put the rack back in. All of this opening and closing, taking in and out, seemed to cool off the pieces really quick. Some of the ITs dropped 10 or 15 degrees just in the 2 minutes they were out of the smoker (about 50* air temp). This seemed to "stall" them and it took quite a while to get them back up to temp.
What is the best way to check a lot of pieces that will have different ITs along the road to doneness?