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I think I picked up my smoking habit from my uncle. No, I don't mean smoking as in smoking - I mean smoking as in smoking fish.

Growing up, my family had a cabin on Little Sand Lake near Remer, MN, and next to us was my aunt and uncle's place. Each spring Uncle Dewain would smoke suckers in his brick smokehouse located between our two cabins. I have a clear memory of aromatic woodsmoke filling the air and Dewain loading racks full of fillets into the smoker. When the fish were done a few hours later, they were a marvelous dark golden brown color and firm to the touch. We would sit around the kitchen table with a large platter heaped with saltine crackers and smoked fillets in front of us. I also recall that it wouldn't take us very long to reduce those fillets to tidy piles of rib bones and scaly skins.

I took up the fish smoking torch from my uncle and I've been smoking fish for many years now. Like Uncle Dewain, I too have grown to really enjoy the process and take pride in the fish I produce. I like to mix up various brines, select just the right sort of wood chips and fine-tune the smoker's temperature and smoke output. It's a process and ritual that hasn't changed for thousands of years. It's one of those sublime, time-tested artisan things, maybe not so unlike making bread or other Old World goodies like that. The art of smoking fish is transcendent and good for the soul. I guess that's why I like doing it so much.

A couple of days ago my two boys were in a mood to catch fish. They'd been after me since the morning to fish and it seemed that nothing else I offered up by way of alternative activities would scratch their itch. I suggested we walk down our bank and fish the St. Croix River and see if the suckers were running. I tied up some simple bottom rigs - #6 egg hooks and a pinch of splitshot a foot or so up the line. It isn't too sophisticated, but when you thread a bit of nightcrawler on the hook it really does the trick on bottom feeders like suckers, carp and the like. We poked along the bank until we found a stretch of water below a long riffle that dumped into a long rocky pool. It was there we found the suckers getting ready to spawn and I'll tell you what, the fish were plentiful and eager to bite. We ended up keeping around thirty fish for the smoker.

As I write this article there are many pounds of sucker fillets down in the basement soaking in a simple brine of water, salt and brown sugar. I like to smoke my fish at a lower temperature and use plenty of wood chips. After some years of smoking fish I can honestly say that I now have the process down to something of a science. Relying on indelible memories of Uncle Dewain's smoked fish, I can turn out fish from my own smoker that look and taste just like those suckers I grew up eating in the spring of the year up at the cabin.

It's been a lot of years since I've eaten smoked sucker. I guess this year officially marks the beginning of a new spring ritual for us. Once my boys get their first taste of those fish tonight, they'll understand - like I did when I was a kid - that the work it takes to catch, clean and smoke spring-run suckers is worth every bit of the effort.

Please pass the crackers.

Dan Brown's weekly outdoor column is brought to you by Frankie's Bait and Marine, in Chisago City, and St. Croix Outdoors, in St. Croix Falls, Wis.

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