Recipe: Maren - Smoked Fish and British Columbia Indians Foods

The following info is from Recipes of British Columbia Canada.
Indian Foods
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Roots of lupin, wild carrots, sea-milkwort,
clover, cinquefoil; bulbs of the ble camas,
wild onion and "indian rice"; sprouts and nettles, fireweed shoots, cow parsnip, seaweed, cambriam; salmonberries,strawberries, huckleberries, blueberries, blackberries, saskatoon berries, sapberries, gooseberries, currants,
elderberries, raspberries, blackcaps,
thimbleberries, salal berries; ferns
hazelnuts, crabapples, highbush, lowbush and bog cranberries; kinnikinnick berries, rose hips and winter huckleberries.
"Indian Ice cream" was made by whipping soap berries, mixing with water, sometimes sweetened by salal berries or saskatoon berries.

Maren I have lived in Canada almost all of my life and have not heard of all of the above. Good to know tho in case I am ever lost in the bush!

Here is the easy method to smoke fish.
Cut off heads and gut fish. Cut all the way along above the backbone, almost to the tail. Cut under the backbone, leaving not more than one fifth of the tail section uncut. Break off the backbone. The fish should lie flat now in one piece. Score the flesh longitudinally from the head to tail, with cuts about one-quarter inch deep and 1 inch apart. Wash thoroughly. Wipe dry. Rub inside and out with one pound salt.
Store fish in a cool place overnight. Next morning, rinse thoroughly. Fasten two or three thin, flat wooden sticks across the back to keep the fish spread open. The sticks should be roughly pointed and the ends should pass through the skin. Hang in a breezy place until the surface moisture has dried and a thin skin has formed on the surface.
Dig a shallow fire pit about 3 feet in diameter. Start a fire as the fish are drying so a good bed of coals will be ready. Hardwood, such as oak or hickory, is the best fuel, but any wood , such as maple, beech, birch or alder may be used.
When the fish have dried sufficiently - about 3 hours under average conditions- fasten each fish to the end of the forked end of a stick about 4 or 5 feet long. Thrust the other noth stick into the ground so that the stick hangs over the bed of coals at an angle. The sticks should be placed fare enough apart that the fish do not touch each other.
Erect a tripod of poles above the smokesticks. On this, lay a thick thatching of green boughs and grass.
Leave a hole in the thatching near the ground. Place green wood on the coals , building up a dense smoke and cover the hole. Place additional green wood on the fire from time to time. Let the fish smoke from 6 to 18 hours, depending on the size and the degree of smoke curing required. After cooling, wrap the fish and store in a cool place. They should remain in good condition for two weeks to a month.
Maren - this seems like lots of work...are you going to try this??

Good luck with your project. Let us know how it goes.