cutthroat, finegrain is right, take care of the fish right away, bleed it and keep it cool. as far as the smoking fish goes and the perfect recipe, well just forget it and keep trying and have fun trying. there are to many varaibles, and with a big cheif its harder yet. alot depends on the fish itself, a summer run is alot differet than a silver and will both take brine and smoke differently, ive been doing this for awhile now and will not claim to do the best smoked fish i simply try to do it consistantly, which is hard, ive been doing some research on hygrometers and this is important i plan on getting one on my smoker, this would help you with the moist fish you like, if you want i could give you some info on a brine i think you might want to try..