Looking for a good brine recipe for catfish. What wood goes good with them? How long do you smoke and at what temp? I tried it once and it was a miserable failure. Fillets from 3-5 pound channel cats if that matters.

I have never smoked fish. I grill channel catfish and bass on mulberry and it comes out very good. Mulberry is overall my favorite wood for grilling anything on. I do use apple, cherry, peach, pear and ash pretty often too. I grill frequently.

Keith

I dont brine mine. just pat them dry, sprinkle a little lawreys on them and put in the smoker. about 225 for i think 2 hours. comes out like jerky and is very addictive

Good question. I'll be watching this.
Keith, I never thought of using mulberry as a smoking wood. I need to give that a try soon.

I've only smoked salt water fish, I don't brine, I give them a dry rub, basically salt,pepper,light on the garlic, and smoke around 225/250.
You need to watch carefully as fish cooks very fast, use a light smoke, any fruit wood is good, Mulberry too.
I think catfish is pretty mild and lean?, if so be especially careful not to over cook, or heavily smoke it.

I fillet Catfish for smoking, leave skin on and ribs in. Sometimes I don’t go all the way through belly so it makes a big butterfly.

1 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup table salt to a gallon of water. Full cup of salt if it coarser type. Brine over night, 6-8 hours. Longer doesn’t hurt, or help. Pat dry with paper towels while charcoal is burning down. Put on rack in front of fan if you want to dry more. I like punky Cottonwood for the smoke. I use an Oklahoma Joe horizontal type smoker and keep heat between 175-275. And take it off when it looks like the ones in pic. Fat bubbling and meat light brown. Good stuff for sure!

Trapset, That looks great. I love smoked fish. I've done salmon steaks before and they were great, but like I said my attempt at catfish was a disaster. Thanks everyone.

I've tried smoking fish before, but couldn't keep them lit! (barump bump!)

I think the hardest thing about cooking catfish, well not hard actually, should say important thing, is moisture. Doesn’t matter if your smoking, grilling or frying. It almost always turns out better if fillets are never soaked in water and are actually allowed to dry out a bit in the frig before cooking. I like to stick fillets to the side of a large stainless steel bowl and cover with foil to allow extra water to drain to bottom of bowl. Or if I have a lot of fish I use drying rack over cookie sheet with foil tent over them. Over night or a couple days like this in the frig let’s some of the naturally high moisture content dry up a bit. This stops the meat from “poaching” under the breading when frying and turning out “mushy” as a lot of people describe it.