Feezing Fish in brine before smoking?

[Cory1]

Caught a coupl trout today, not quite enough to do a batch on the smoker but I was thinking it might be easy to freeze the fish in the brine; then when I've got a load for the smoker to just thaw, dry, then smoke.

Can't believe I never thought of this until now.

Is this a great idea or am I crazy??

[Habfan]

Leaving fish in salt water for more than 24 hours would not be my recommendation. If it is heavily salted, might not even freeze. Freeze your fish, thaw when you have enough to smoke. You might even want to start trying dry rub methods, I've noticed friends and family are preferring this to brine.

[pikeman06]

I never have much luck thawing fish then smoking. Can't seem to get them to pellicle. They have a Sandy texture almost instead of the nice sticky shiny glaze that I look for that tells me they are ready to smoke. Maybe if the fish was froze whole then thawed and fileted they would be different. Just my own finding on pike and whites.

[KegRiver]

Dad used to soak fish in salt brine for a day or two, then smoke them.

That was the old school way.

I think if I was going to freeze them I'd soak them in brine once they thawed out again. But maybe hab might be right, maybe they wouldn't freeze. But they would be well preserved in a freezer.

Salt brine will protect from freezing at least down to -20c, -10f.
I learned that from running snowplow.

My information tells me, that is the average temperature inside a freezer.
Salt does not keep things warm, it works by lowering the freezing point of water. Water is what freezes in foods that makes them hard.

The meat would still be just as cold, but it would not be solid and it might just thaw out faster. Ice is a poor conductor of heat.