If a brine recipe doesn't contain very much salt, you'll need to leave the fish in the brine for a long time in order to reach a desirable level of saltiness.  If a brine recipe has a higher concentration of salt, you may need to leave the fish in the brine for only a couple of hours.  The length of time you need to leave the fish in the brine also depends on the thickness of the fillets or pieces of fillets which you are smoking. The soaking time called for by various brine recipes varies wildly.  You usually need to go through a trial and error process when learning how to use a wet brine recipe.  Start by leaving the fish in the brine for the length of time specified in the recipe, and take notes about the length of time and the size and species of the fish you brined.  If the smoked fish is too salty, reduce the brining time next time you use the recipe.  If the smoked fish is too bland, increase the brining time next time you use the recipe.

To reduce this trial and error process, I standardize the salt content of all of my brine recipes at 60 degrees Salometer. This is a moderately concentrated brine which produces pretty short brining times.  Here are examples of the brining times which I use for several of my favorite recipes: 11"-12" kokanee fillets, 1.75 hours; 15"-18" kokanee fillets, 2.5 hours; 20"-24" lake trout fillets cut into 3" pieces, 3.25 hours; 18"-21" lake whitefish, thick part of fillets 3 hours, thin rib meat from fillets 1.5 hours.  I keep careful notes on the results of each batch of smoked fish, and adjust these instructions.  My note taking allows me to get consistently good results when I smoke fish.

Adjusting the quantity of ingredients in a brine recipe to produce more or less brine than the original recipe can be a hassle.  For example, how many tablespoons are there in a cup? if you screw up your conversion or your math, you can end up with a lousy batch of smoked fish.  To make it easy to adjust the quantity of ingredients in my brine recipes, I put them on Excel spreadsheets.  All I have to do is enter the number of cups of brine that I want, say 5 cups, and hit tab, and all of the quantities in the recipe automatically adjust.

Recipes which specify dry ingredients by weight will produce more consistent results than recipes which specify dry ingredients by volume, because the density of dry ingredients varies quite a bit.  For example, a cup of table salt weighs more than a cup of kosher salt, and a cup of compacted brown sugar weighs more than a cup of loose brown sugar. I convert all of the dry ingredient quantities in the brine recipes I use to weights.

I only use wet brine recipes, because they produce more consistent results than dry brine recipes.

Here's a couple pictures of fish being brined in ziplock bags.  I periodically massage and flip over the bags to expose the fillets evenly to the brine.

If you're looking for a good read, do yourself a favor and grab a cop of Ed Gillet's adventure, 'Pacific Alone'.

The book is "Pacific Alone", by Dave Shively.

Bilge pump in the front hatch seems like a bad idea. If you need it, it might not be possible to extract from the front hatch without capsizing. Won’t it fit inside the center hatch? That’s where I keep it on my Adventure/Revo 16.

There are a couple of situations where you could end up with a bunch of water inside a sit-on-top kayak, such as (a) developing a leak in the hull, (b) from a wave breaking over the kayak when a hatch is open, or (c) from the kayak spending an extended period upside down, perhaps in a surf zone.  Some of these things are unlikely to happen, but you should have a plan to deal with the situation if it happens.  I always keep a hand-pumped bilge pump under the center hatch in my Revolution and in my Pro Angler, where I could use it to pump out modest amounts of water from inside the kayak.  But I recognize that there are significant limitations on the usefulness of a bilge pump when you're out on the water, in particular the following: 

1. As a sit-on-top kayak gets increasing amounts of water inside it, the kayak will sit lower and lower in the water, water will flow into the cockpit through the scupper holes, and eventually the water level in the cockpit will reach the level of the center hatch and start flowing inside the kayak. As that level approaches, you'd have to stop pumping and close the hatch or risk totally swamping the kayak, particularly since a semi-swamped kayak is pretty unstable and will lurch from side to side as water sloshes around inside the hull.  This risk is lower on paddle kayaks which have an elevated hatch between the paddler's legs, such as an Ocean Kayak Trident.

2. In a sit-on-top kayak, the rim of the front hatch is higher than the hatch in front of the kayak's seat.  However, if you move forward in the cockpit to try to get a bilge pump out of the front hatch, or to pump water out of the front hatch, the water inside the hull will rush forward and sink the bow of the kayak. If the front hatch is open when that happens, the kayak will get totally swamped. So you shouldn't store a bilge pump in the front hatch, or plan to use a hand pump to empty water out of the front hatch.

I've heard of kayakers who installed an electric bilge pump inside their kayak.  If you have a kayak which has leaky hatches and routinely takes on a lot of water during a day of kayaking, that might be worth considering.  But I never get more than small dribbles of water inside my kayak, so for me it isn't worth installing an electric bilge pump. If I had a kayak which routinely took on so much water that it might be worth installing an electric bilge pump, I'd sell it and get a better kayak.

I own a 13' Revolution and a 12' Pro Angler 360.  I got the PA 360 because I do a lot of jigging.  I'm pretty skillful at staying stationary over the bottom in my Revolution, but as I expected, the 360 drive is terrific for the maneuvering required to stay stationary over the bottom in wind and waves. If you do a lot of jigging or other tight maneuvering, there are huge advantages to the 360 drive.  However, that capability is the only thing I like about my Pro Angler.  Here's a partial list of things which I dislike about the Pro Angler:

1. It's heavy and a beast to move around, to get on top of a vehicle, and to launch at unimproved launch sites.  I can't pick it up and move it more than a couple of feet by myself - anything other than minor repositioning has to be done on a cart. 

2. It's slow, especially in headwinds and in waves.  In completely calm conditions and for short periods of time I can get it up to half a mile an hour slower than I routinely travel in my Revolution, but if there is any wind or waves, I'm usually moving at about 1.5 mph slower than I would be traveling in my Revolution. If I want to troll, I use my Revolution. At the end of a day in my Pro Angler, I'm more tired than I am after a day in my Revolution.

3.  The H rails make it a lot harder to get in and out of the kayak.  This is particularly a problem when I'm landing in waves which are crashing on shore, and climbing out of the kayak over the H-Rails while holding a paddle is real awkward.  I prefer gear tracks to the H rails.

4.  It's a beast to paddle when you need to paddle, as the steering mechanisms next to the seat and anything you have mounted on the H-rails, such as a fish finder and a rod holder, interfere with paddling.  And the high seat and H-Rails mean that you need to use a long and awkward paddle to paddle a Pro Angler.  It's bad enough when you need to paddle a short distance away from or back to shore, but paddling longer distances is a awkward and a lot of work.  A month or so ago the belt on my 360 drive mechanism broke, freezing my drive when it was sitting at right angles to the keel.  I was about 1.5 miles from my launch site.  I took my fish finder and rod holder off the H-rails and paddled back to my launch site.  It was a lot of work. By comparison, my Revolution is a pleasure to paddle.  I've paddled it on four day and five day unsupported kayak trips on the John Day River in Oregon, with a plug in the drive hole.  My Revolution paddles better than my 13' Ocean Kayak Trident.  I'm an experienced whitewater kayaker, but I would not feel comfortable paddling my Pro Angler in or out through surf.

5. The paddle required to paddle a Pro Angler is too long to mount on a paddle holder on the side of the kayak, so after you paddle away from shore you have to break it in half and store the halves on clips on the rear half of the kayak, and before you land you need to re-assemble the paddle.  This is a pain in the butt.  And if one of the paddle halves got knocked out of its clip, it would sink.

6.  Only Hobie makes accessories which mount on the H-Rails, and those attachments are expensive.  For example, a tackle bin which mounts on the H-Rails costs $55. You can mount a base from any manufacturer on a Hobie H-Rail mounting plate, but you have to buy the mounting plate for $25 to do it. Rather than buy the Hobie gear bin, I bought two "Mainstays" ice bins from Walmart for $2.00 each and clip them to the H-Rails next to my seat, where they fit perfectly.

7.  When paddling my Revolution in large and breaking waves, I can brace and set the kayak on its edge like a whitewater kayak.  You can't do that in a Pro Angler.  Paddling a Pro Angler is sort of like paddling a section of a floating dock.  It's comfortable to sit on the dock in a lawn chair in moderate waves, but if the waves get too big, the section of dock is going to flip over, and there isn't much you can to to prevent it from happening.

On the positive side, the Pro Angler is a nicely designed kayak with a comfortable seat and many thoughtfully designed features, and there are kayaks produced by other manufacturers which are heavier than the Pro Angler. There are no doubt people without much kayaking experience who feel safer and more comfortable in a big kayak like a Pro Angler, but I prefer a kayak-sized kayak to the Pro Angler and other mini-bass-boat kayaks.

I wish that Hobie would produce an Outback with a 360 drive.  If they do that, I'll buy one instantly and sell my Pro Angler.  I don't know why Hobie couldn't produce an Outback with a 360 drive - the Outback is only two inches narrower than a 12' Pro Angler.

Ow! Eeew. Yuck. Great article.

I like my knives to be sharp when I'm processing fish and game.  Here are pictures of a kitchen knife sharpening jig I made for use with Lansky diamond hones.  The advantage of this jig over the Lansky knife holder/sharpening guide is that my jig allows me to keep the hones at right angles to the edge of the knife blade for the entire length of the edge.  The problem with the Lansky knife holder/sharpening guide is that it produces a much lower bevel angle at the base and tip of the edge than it does at the point where the guide is clamped to the knife, as shown in the last picture below.

I caught a 15" kokanee which contained roe, made caviar from the roe, and used the caviar in some gunkanmaki ("battleship") sushi.

I strap a hard-sided cooler in the rear cargo areas of my Revolution and my 12' Pro Angler.  Hard-sided coolers hold a lot of ice and a lot of fish, it's easy to dump fish into them, if you get one with good insulation they do a good job of keeping ice and fish cold, it's easy to get access to them on the water by turning sideways in your seat, and they're easy to clean out.  I have several different sizes of hard-sided coolers, and use the size which is appropriate for the size and number of fish which I hope to catch.   A large hard-sided cooler catches more wind than a low-profile soft-sided cooler, but a hard-sided cooler in the rear cargo area of a kayak will have a lot less impact on the stability and trim of a kayak than a soft-sided cooler strapped on top of the front hatch of a kayak.  And it's inconvenient to slide your butt forward in the cockpit of a kayak to slide fish into a soft-sided cooler which is strapped on top of the kayak's front hatch.  You may need to pull out your mirage drive in order to be able to slide forward far enough to get fish into a soft-sided cooler strapped on top of the kayak's front hatch.

The cooler in the pictures is a large one which I use when fishing for lake trout, when I can reasonably hope to catch large numbers of fish, and can reasonably hope to catch fish well over 30" long.  When fishing for kokanee, I use a lot smaller cooler.

Here's a suggestion for keeping your fish cold in a hard-sided cooler or a top-loading soft-sided cooler: put at least half of your ice in a mesh back, and after to dump a fish in the cooler, pick up the back and plop it down on top of the fish. The mesh bags I use are shown in the last picture.