I got it for $5/lb. Local fish market. Which is the only reason I bought 2. Any supermarket it would be like $9/lb per filet. This was the whole fish...head and all. I save the heads which I late use to make fish broth for soup.

Ok so here's how it works. It's simple but takes a while. What you're basically doing is dehydrating. Where as smoke cooks....somewhat. do you cold smoke or hot smoke? Cold smoking is closer to curing. Because all you're doing is drying with a little smoke added for flavor. Both cold smoking and curing leaves the fish raw but adds flavor.

Depending on how well you know the fish market you may want to store the fish in the freezer for a week to make sure that if there is any parasites they die. Most of the time if you eat raw fish like sushi it has been flash frozen to instantly kill any parasites if there are any. This is instant. However we don't have access to flash freezing so you need to keep it frozen for a week or so because the freezer acts slowly and if any parasites exist they slowly fall asleep but not necessarily die. So you need to keep it long enough for them to die. This doesn't mean all fish have parasites but you don't know which.

First you need a cold place to store it so that the bacteria doesn't form. A fridge is fine.

For a 2 lb filet you need...
1 cup kosher salt
1 cup sugar
If you want you can add dill and lemon.

You can go more on the salt but I wouldn't suggest less. If you want less maybe minimum of 3/4 cup. The reason for salting is to preserve the fish by removing the water and stopping the growth of microorganisms. The sugar will kill the taste of all that salt and it helps in the growth of good bacteria like Lactobacillius.

-pull out the bones and leave the skin on. -Take the cup of salt and cup of sugar and mix it thoroughly in a bowl.
-Take piece of saran wrap the size of the filet and spread 1/3 - 1/2 of the salt/sugar mixture on it.
-Place the filet on top and put the rest of the mixture on top of the filet. Rub in the mixture thoroughly on top and all around the sides.
-Fold the saran wrap over top tightly. Pinch off one end but leave the other end open. Take some more saran wrap and again wrap it around tightly but don't fold the filet and make sure to leave one end open for drainage.
-Place the filet in a large pan or anything that will collect the liquid.
-Place that pan with filet in the fridge and have one end raised a little so that the liquid will pool away from the filet. Make sure the open end of the saran wrap is facing down. You can use whatever you want to raise the one side. I used a small book.
-On top of the filet place a weight. You can put just a cinder block or what I did was put on top a tray for better weight distribution and placed 3 full water jugs on top.

That's it. Now you just wait. Technically it's done after 48 hours. You can take it out and get rid of the liquid that pooled. If you want to make sure it's done flip it over, put it back in a long with the weight and give it another 2 days. If you don't see any more liquid or if it's very little (it will never be completely dry) it's done.
If after the first 2 days you still see salt mixture drain, flip and leave it longer. The salt will probably never completely dissolve so you may see some here and there.
-when done take the fillet out, wash it thoroughly, dry it lightly buy dabbing with a paper towel and you're done....ready to eat. You can slice it thin and put in the fridge or freezer for longer storage. Or you can cut of pieces as needed.

You can play with the amount of salt and time in fridge to get he desired taste and moisture. The more salt you have and the longer it sits the harder it will become (relatively speaking).

What you can also do afterwards is smoke it if you want

I know it sounds like a lot but it takes all of 5 - 10 minutes to do. You can add other spices but you NEED the salt and sugar