Have a great weekend!

Well I'm going to abandon ship early today and head off on a salmon fishing weekend. I hope everybody has a great weekend and I'll "see" you on monday!

Good luck fishing. I've never had any luck when I was fishing... well, mostly

There was one fishing trip where I caught around 30 good sized fishes... don't remember what they were, but I think 3 of them were bass. I think most of them were trout, but I'm not sure...

I suck at fishing, but I would love to fillet and eat some fresh salmon. Mmmm.

Much luck, sir.

I've got a deer tag to fill, so I'm absent this weekend too. Hours and hours and hours of sitting in the snow.....

Snow already?

Up in the hills there is some. Last night I was probably about 3000 feet elevation (my house is about 2100) and there was a couple inches and it was snowing on me while I sat on a log for a couple hours. Its been cold and rainy all week.

There was a show on Discovery Channel or something the other day about salmon fishing and old styles of doing it.

One way I thought was kinda cool was they waited until low tide and erected these wooden cone things into a sort of wall out over the mud banks.

There was anothe rguy with a hand net that looked like a Y stick with a net tied between the prongs, and he would run around in somewhat shallow water chasing salmon trying to scoop them up.

I think the grizzly bears have the right idea though. Sit on top of a waterfall and wait for the salmon to come to you!

Well I'm back to work this morning. Here's a few photos from the weekend.


A Dark Fish but in good shape. It will be good smoked. 33 inch Coho Salmon


When the Hatchery is closed, the fish still try to return.



I love the way the top corky blured on this. It makes it look like he was caught with a little bit of fire.

Not bad, what do you use for a smoker? A small electric unit or a home-made gem? And how about wood chips, what kind?

Once I get my deer this year (running out of time) I'm going to see if I can adapt my Little Weber charcoal grill with a terra cotta pot to make a half ass make shift smoker. Alton Brown (aka ATNO) did barbeque in such a way on an episode that aired not too long ago. I want to see how good I am at jerky making.

Well first all, I don't smoke fish myself. I don't even eat fish.

But i do make my own jerky out of Elk, Deer and Beef.

I have a store bought Big Chief Smoker. It can fit around 10 lbs of meat in at one time. Kinda nice when you have a large roast to chop up.

Lots of people build their own smokers but the cost of a store bought one isn't high and I think that after you buy or find all the parts to build your own, you end up paying more anyways.

As for chips, I but hickory chips for most of my stuff. I have a fired that uses a wood shipper to make his own. He uses apple, apricot and other fruit trees.

To anybody out there that likes jerky. Don't be afraid to do it yourself. It's east as hell and you save a ton of money compared to buying it.

I still haven't gotten my wife totally convinced that eating venison is good, so I'll probably be making a lot of jerky and roasts for my "boys campouts", that's what my wife calls them any way. I've got a rinky dink dehydrator but I'll probably do it in the stove because the dehydrator is kind of a piece of junk. Smoking is my only obstacle at this point, so I'll be doing lots of experimenting. I might even just go totally junk yard and steal...I mean borrow...a big steel drum from my neighbor if he has any that are clean enough, then just build a fire in the yard and let it burn down to coals and put a pan of wood chips on it with the barrel and the hung up meat over it.

I always look forward for an exotic holiday trip..last summer I planned my vacation at Barcelona with my entire family..Oh God..the lip smacking food, exotic landscape, affordable flats on rents, various hang out places...made me fall in love with Barcelona!