1 cup pickling salt
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
per gallon of unchlorinated water.
I mix it up in a separate container. Then the fish. Usually 2.5 gallons will do a bucket full of fish. Three gallons to be sure.
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After I clean and quarter the fish, I put them in a 5 gallon pail. If they are ruff fish like Red Horse, Carp, Chubs, or Suckers make sure you really clean the inside flesh careful. No blood pockets or mud lines allowed.
Then pour some brine, add fish, add brine, etc until the bucket or brine container is full. Put a GLASS plate on top of the fish to keep them under the brine. If no glass plate, take a food quality plastic bag, set that on top and fill it with water to weight the fish down. Then cover the pail with cheese cloth, to keep the bugs out of it.
The fish will only absorb so much of the salt and sweets, so after two day, you can usually smoke. Do not rinse the fish when you remove them from the brine.
Hang the fish on wires in the smoker so the grease can drip out of the fish and any other moisture otherwise some fish come out a greasy mess.
I use maple or apple wood. Soak the wood chips for around 1/2 hour in water. Get your coals or heat source good and hot at first and then put the wood chips in a smoker box over the coals. I like to smoke the fish real hard with dense smoke for the first two hours. You can reduce the smoke as you see fit.
Smoke the fish until you see the fish bloom - or turn the color of smoke you like. After that check the flesh. It should be dry and flake. If not, put in on pans and stick it in your oven on 200 degrees for as long as it takes to dry the fish to your liking...
After the fish cools, I vacuum seal it in serving sizes...