I was looking up some ideas on how to cook trout and I got a little inspired to make my own recipe. I would start by gutting and deboning. I would remove the head but leave the tail attached. Rub with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
Then to cook it, I put it on a stick leaned over the fire. The end of the stick will be in the tail to keep it there. After about 20 min, enough time to absorb the smoke and get hot, you pull it off the stick, put in tinfoil and stuff the cavity with onion and parsley. Then you finish cooking in the foil probably 5 min per side, or until flaky.
This will give you the smoky cooking over wood flavor, keep the fish from falling apart, and it will not stick to the grill grate (like if you were to try to do the first step without the stick). It will take longer to cook than just putting it in foil on the grate, but if you are cooking a pasta side like me then it shouldn't add too much time to the overall process.
Not sure you're going to want to taste most of the wood you'll be cooking over up there. IIRC alder's about the only decent smoking wood available in the BWCA; the rest is softwood which is resinous and doesn't make for good flavor. By all means give it a try and report back if the fish are biting but I usually stick to simpler methods like pan frying or foil roasting. I guess you could pack in a few chunks of good smoking wood and see if that helps though it'll burn off pretty fast.
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir
Cedar works pretty well, and the wood doesn't matter all that much if you let it burn to mostly coals first. One of my favorite things to do is to have a snack before bed of walleye cooked just by sticking it over the fire and slow cooking it in the smoke. It can take an hour but we are sitting around enjoying the fire anyways. It tastes great and we never really paid too much attention to the type of wood we are using. Its not like we use green wood or pine needles.
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