Interesting choices of wood. I might try something different next time. Here
in Sweden I think juniper wood,
or branches from the juniper bush is the most commonly used when smoking
fish. Juniper adds a really nice
flavour and when you're out camping that's also the only decent smoking
wood you find. That's a kind of warm
smoking. When I'm smoking fish at home when I have more time for
preparation it's mostly a combination
juniper branches and alder wood. Then it's cold smoking in a smoking
installation me and my father built at our
summer cabin, with the fire being made in a kind of brick owen fireplace.
From the brick owen the smoke is led
by 3 meter pipe in the ground (slightly upwards) to a small wooden
"house", that's 50cmx50cm at the base and
about 2 meters high with a number grids in it to place the fish on. And on
the top there's a small chimney.

When I was a kid we had instructions for building a "pit smoker" from a
Boy Scout Manual and we decided to give that a try on a camping trip
once. It worked pretty good, and was sort of similar to what you've
described here.... indirect heat source placed a short distance away
from the fish, tunnel for the smoke to travel through underground and
the fish in a burlap sack teepee above ground on racks.

We used alder that we collected at streamside for the wood... because it
was sort of green, we stripped off all of the bark, then dried the wood
over the fire the night prior to smoking.


As for the Indian Candy, we buy a Jerky that's called "Pioneer Candy"...
the sweetness on it comes from a honey baste/glaze that's applied near
the end of the smoking cycle. I've made it a couple of times, and it
does fine in a wet-style smoker like the one Chuck described. You need
to heat the honey and add a small amount of orange juice (and yes,
bourbon works well to thin honey, too!!) to it so it thins down, then
apply it VERY THINLY to the fish about an hour before it comes out of
the smoker.

Larry