Lesson Learned

kent8888

Yesterday I started early to smoke a nice piece of salmon. My intention was to smoke between 150 and 160 until I got an internal temp 145. Normally that would take 6 or 7 hours.
All was going well until about 10:30 when I noticed the temp had started to drop. I did all the usual things, including use of my coat hanger wiggle rod, to bring the temp back up. At around 11 AM the temp had continued to fall into the 120's and I concluded the fire had gone out. 
I pulled the salmon and plate setter and found plenty of lump and applewood chips unburned. No smoke--no fire. 
I added a little more lump and restarted. The salmon went back on and all was well until about 3:30 when the temp again started to fall. By this time I had an internal temp of 135 so I pulled the salmon and brought it to 145 in the oven.  
Delicious.
Today, I cleared the egg lump by lump and found two probable causes of my lack of air flow and then fire loss. First, the small applewood chips had clogged the fire box vents and second the build up ash under the the fire box had choked off the air flow. 
The lesson for me is that when I have a persistent drop in temp, not only do I open vents and use the coat hanger, but I clean out the ash box. 

Photo Egg

The learning never ends.
But it all worked out in the end. Excellent

td66snrf

The lowest temperature I can hold steady is about 225.

HeavyG

Might consider getting either a Kick Ash Basket or a more open fire grate like a High-Que. Little chips won't clog and at the end of a cook it's really easy to see thru to see if it's time to sweep out the ash.

SmokeyPitt

kent8888 said:

Yesterday I started early to smoke a nice piece of salmon. My intention was to smoke between 150 and 160 ...

If I understand correctly and you were trying to maintain an egg temp of 150-160, then I think that is the problem. Like @td66snrf said the lowest temp you can maintain is around 225 without some trickery. 

kent8888

Thanks for the comments. This was my third salmon smoke under 200. It has always been pretty labor intensive, with a need for vent adjustments throughout the day. I'll experiment some to see the result of smoking at 225.  

The Cen-Tex Smoker

Any time I plan to go really low or really high (like pizza) that is the catalyst for me to clean out the ash. I have a kick ash basket so I don’t get clogged fire grate anymore. 

flexfusion

After each cook, I close everything off to kill the fire which takes probably three hours.  I pull out the unburned lumps and shop vac out what few ashes are left.  I always vacuum each air hole to get what might be in the back of the fire box.  One thing for sure a good fire needs O2.

booksw

I third the kick-ash basket.  Since I have had it, it’s super easy to clean all the ash out with every single cook- I also have the liner with mine so I just shake the basket a couple of times, dump out the ash that’s in the liner, and everything is clean.

dmourati

I do a little cleaning prior to each cook. First, I stir up the lump/ash with a small garden trowel. I knock off any crud/lump/left over food from the top of the fire ring. Then I pick up 2-3 trowel fulls of ash from the front vent and dump it in the garden.  Add lump, light, and go.

Seems to work fine for me. I'm not trying to run any sub-200 temps though. I would think you would need a controller for that.