I have a 10lb grass carp on brine at the moment. I will smoke it tomorrow.

I use to smoke carp and they were very good … the secret was in the marinade sauce you soaked in for about 12 hours … when you took them out you knew they were ready to be smoked, because they had a slick looking glaze on them. Then you smoked them for another 8 to 10 hours … AND they did taste like ham … but … I have lost the marinade recipe … and don't want to waste the fish or time experimenting … If anyone from the lake Erie area has it, let me know. We usually didn't even mess with anything under 10 pounds (fish size) and used mostly the meat one the upper back and above the red/gray line.

Garry-

never cleaned a carp...had a little smoked once a guy gave me. It was good. Saw huge big head carp steaks in asian store other day.....looked good.

trapset how do u clean yours? any pics?

ya your right about the water,gotta be good no toxins.if the water is muddy skin em,i have seen people clean the platter of fish that they would not eat if they knew what it was.you just gotta take care and fix them right.be it pickled,smoked,canned,baked or fried.you got me hungry for fish now too.

Had some smoked Carp down in Sandusky once.Was very good.

That is the area I was in …. just on the west side of Sandusky Bay …


Garry-

I couldn't find any pics of the cleaning WRR. On the Silvers I fillet with electric knife, just a Walmart Black and Decker. I don't go very far down the rib cage any more, thus I avoid the mess of opening belly. Have also heard the fatter belly meat is where the heavy metals hang out. Jumpers get real bony down by the tail section as well. I usually cut off the last 3 or 4 inches ahead of the tail. Cleaning like above then removing red meat takes aprox 30 jumpers to make 25 pints of canned fish.

I just made cold Carp sandwiches Saturday. Scoop of mayo and a scoop of dill relish mixed in well drained canned Carp. Put in frig to cool and set up for an hr or so before making sandwiches. Putting carp jar in frig several hrs before making cuts down frig time on finished product. This is way milder than tuna salad and is great on crackers as well as sandwiches.

Here's a couple jars of all jumpers.

i dont know what u mean by jumpers,,we just have the big old common river carp here.

Asian Silver Carp

The invasive Asian Carp called "Silver Carp" are the ones that jump out of the water from the noise of the motor. We just started calling them Jumpers and it stuck.LOL

I used to do the exact same thing as above with the common Carp your talking about as well. We would run set lines baited with night crawlers early in spring until we got enough for a canning batch. OK to freeze till you get enough, but like always, fresher is better. Common Carp are not quite as white in the jar, but looks good when you remove most of the red meat. Tastes pretty much the same as Jumpers to me when canned.

we dont have those here in the river in my pasture...yet

Lucky you WWR. We have way to many of them. They got here 6 or so years ago and just exploded. Seems like the pop doubled every year for a while there.

doesnt look appetizing,canned

Well if ya only ate stuff that looked good what fun would that be? LOL

You are not hungry enough.

I don't think they'd move much Tuna if it were sold in glass jars either. I can tell you that removing the red meat, which turns brown when canned make the fish look a lot better.

They were trying to develop a market for thees invasive carp so they had blind taste tests and nearly 100% of the people tested preferred the milder canned Carp over Tuna. The problem was, when the people were told what it was nearly 100% said they would still buy Tuna over Carp.LOL

I told my daughter that story when we were canning a few years ago and she said "They just need to call it something else." Thats when she started labeling the jars Carpe`. LOL

Heck, those jumpers get big enough, call them fresh water tuna.

I see you put an E on the end of "Carpe"?? does that make it more trendy like a "Shoppe" at the mall? You really got me thinking now I need to be canning me some Carp or at least suckers. I've only ever smoked them.

Mac

My daughter started adding the e' with the accent to make it more marketable, jokingly, after i told her about the Tuna/Carp taste test. Sounds like Carpeh' rather than just plain old Carp. lol