Reports

Did a full day with Greg on Friday chasing lakers. He’s a riot to have on board and he always has me laughing my butt off. We were out together a couple weeks ago on 7/19 and he had dropped quite a few nice lakers then, so the goal today was to land a few. We started at 6 am to ensure our best chance of success and things went very well. Within a few hours he’d landed 10 nice lakers up to 29″. He was dead on with his detection of bites, hook setting and playing of fish. Bait and lakers are gradually working their way south and it pays to move around. He gave me a couple of nice fish to smoke and I’m psyched to have some smoked lake trout this week. Fish were from around 75′ to 100′ of water. We used a variety of plastics to tease the lakers into hitting. T-storms drove us off the lake just before 2 pm, but the bite had pretty much slowed by 11 am.

Not to brag, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a better, more fool-proof brine recipe for smoking lake trout than the one I have on my website! I came up with the proportions years ago and I really don’t mess with it much. The brine is dilute enough to give you room for error – you can brine your fish from 14 to 22 hours and still get great results! Try that with a conventional brine recipe and your fish will run from “Salty” to “Saltier!!!” You can find the recipe by clicking onto “About John” and going into “The Chef”. One of these days I’ll do some experimenting with other flavors/brines, but for now I’m very happy with that recipe and I’m glad to share it. I’ve had numerous offers to sell smoked fish by folks who have tried it. Try it and see for yourself! Make sure you dry your fish after brining for a couple hours to form the pellicle – that shiny surface on the fillets. Use fresh Finger Lakes trout and smoke with Alder wood with an occasional pan of Hickory. It’s tough to beat!

cayuga lake