Best way to grill/smoke bluefish

[Slobber Bob]

There are just too many good eating fish for me to mess with oily, strong, nasty-tasting blue fish- fun to catch just like lady fish and tarpon- no one I know eats lady fish or tarpon...they make great cut bait and crab bait..

your loss!

[Tyrone Shoes]

There are just too many good eating fish for me to mess with oily, strong, nasty-tasting blue fish- fun to catch just like lady fish and tarpon- no one I know eats lady fish or tarpon...they make great cut bait and crab bait..

Its like venison. ..... worst meat I've ever had and the best meat I've ever had. All depends on how its prepared. Not saying bluefish is the best fish I've ever had but it can be damn good!

[HJS]

I smoke blue fish on a standard Weber Grill pretty much as others have described. But I’ll still outline how I do mine:

But first you need to find just the right tin can (about 4” dia & 4” high) that will fit between the briquette grate and the food grate . Go to the super market and find anything that comes in a can about this size. Buy it and eat whats in it, save the can, cut the bottom out. Dinty Moore beef stew comes to mind. If you own a pair of tin snips, you can cut back a can that’s too tall. The can keeps the charcoal & wood chunks contained and is much easier to control.

- Bleed, head and gut fish.
- Soak in brine a few hours, pat dry.
- Paint on maple syrup or a brown sugar syrup (1/4 cup brown sugar to ¼ cup of water).
- Buy a bag of mesquite chips/chunks or other chunks of your favorite wood. (Sold at all WalMarts, Lowes or HD.)
- Sit can on charcoal grate off to the side and fill with briquettes and start them burning.
- After briquettes are burning strong then start adding wet chunks of wood chunks.
- Add fish to grate.
- As the fire burns down keep adding alternating chunks of briquettes and wood chunks.
- Smoke until done, maybe 2-4 hours depending on size of fish. Keep Weber top on during the smoking process.

Fish on Grill.jpg

[kevinfry]

smoked Bluefish is awesome. Oily fishes always smoke best (salmon, mackerel, smelt, bluefish). I wanted to show you the smoker I made just for this purpose.....though i also smoke venison haunch in it as well.
I brine bluefish for 2 hours minimum in fridge, the thicker the filets the longer I brine it--brown sugar, soy sauce, salt and either water or cheap red wine. Sometimes I add a hot sauce like sriracha

My smoker is made from a galvanized trash can. My buddy has one he made from an old school locker which works even better. electric hotplate in bottom (see vent and cord) steel rods hold fish

I put small vents in lid --this holds most of the smoke so you can put fillets skin-side down and still get lots of smoke in the meat

The hotplate has a tin can placed on the burner with soaked smoker chips in it. The smaller the can the cooler the smoke. In this pic, I had a larger candy tin because I wanted more heat (it was cold outside), Sometimes I use a spam tin or soup can to keep heat source localized and therefore have cooler smoke.

Sorry I don't have pics of finished product, my son gobbled it up too fast! I monitor the fish till it is "done" since many factors can influence smoking time including- amount of fish, thickness of fish, outside air temperature, rain, etc... If you like other smoked fish, you'll love smoked blues.

[gillplate]

amen. personally I'll take smoked bluefish that I smoke over any expensive smoked salmon I've ever eaten!