Learn How to make Smoked Bass at home with just fish, salt and smoke! You can substitute salmon (cook it skin side down and don’t flip it) or trout ( just adjust the cooking time).

I think I’ve mentioned here before about how much fishing my dad does now that he’s retired. He’s cut back on getting out on the water lately, but he still goes out two or three times a week. He catches a lot of catfish that we use to make Catfish Cakes and catfish burgers like the one pictured below.

He brings home quite a bit of bream and has even been in a few tournaments. Once in a while he’ll catch some really beautiful bass and we get treated to a great meal. When we visited my parents a few weeks ago he shared with us some delicious smoked bass.

He had two bass to cook that day- one about 3.5 pounds or so and a larger bass of about 5.5 pounds that had to be cut in half to fit in his smoker. After he scaled and gutted the fish (which you don’t have to worry about if you buy your fish from a market) he was ready to proceed.

The preparation for this was amazingly, ridiculously simple. Just score a few slits on both sides of the fish, salt well (about 1 teaspoon of kosher salt per pound of fish) and smoke it for just a short time. Hot smoked bass was absolutely delicious! My husband, kids and I could not get enough of this delicious smoked bass. The flavor was absolutely incredible. He used a combination of charcoal and soaked apple wood chunks.

I can’t tell you an exact temperature but it’s a pretty hot smoke, between 250-300 degrees for about 25 minutes per side. He uses two large spatulas to turn the fish half way through cooking. That’s about as easy as it gets and it was delicious. The applewood smoke is the perfect seasoning for the mild, firm flesh of the bass.

He used a water smoker like the one in this affiliate link from Amazon

I made a juicy watermelon and tomato salad with herbs and produce that my parents had in the house. I’ll post that recipe ASAP

How to make Smoked Bass