Charlie’s Smokehouse: A Door County tradition since 1932

Rich Palzewic

Staff

October 6, 2025

GILLS ROCK – In the unincorporated community of Gills Rock, near the Washington Island Ferry Line, Charlie’s Smokehouse has been smoking fish the old-fashioned way for more than 90 years.

Owned by Charlie and Bonnie Voight, Charlie’s Smokehouse is located at 12371 State Highway 42 and specializes in smoked whitefish, salmon, trout and shrimp.

The couple’s son and future owner of the business, Chris Voight, said the smokehouse is a small, family-owned business steeped in local Lake Michigan smoked fish traditions.

Voight, the third generation in the family to work at Charlie’s, said his grandpa, LeRoy “Roy,” started the smokehouse in 1932.

“Obviously, with my grandpa beginning in the early 1930s, he used traditional smoking methods,” he said. “They didn’t have all these sophisticated means like they do today to smoke fish. He used a smoker and wood to create the smoke – that’s it.”

Furthermore, Voight said the family legacy is already moving into the fourth generation, with his son, Nick, currently working and training at Charlie’s Smokehouse – following in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, grandfather and father.
“With my grandpa starting things, my dad, Charlie, eventually took over,” he said. “Now, my son, Nick, is working here as the fourth generation and training with us. We take a lot of pride in being a small, family-run business.”

Voight said he thinks customers keep coming back to Charlie’s because of the way the fish tastes and how they incorporate traditional smoking methods.

“We don’t use anything modern to smoke our fish,” he said. “Just like my grandpa did, we smoke our fish with wood fire. We’ve always done it this way.”

Doing things the old-fashioned way, Voight said, doesn’t mean using wood fire to smoke fish is easy.

“Smoking our fish in the way we do is probably way more labor-intensive than doing it other ways,” he said. “We’re cutting and splitting a lot of wood for burning in the smokehouse, and you’re constantly tending to the fires throughout the day. It’s rather labor-intensive, but we like the tradition, and we think it turns out really good.”

Though Voight said he’s not an expert on “other smoking methods,” he thinks wood-fire smoking gives the fish a more intense flavor.

“It’s constantly burning wood under the fish, so the smoke is continuously rolling through the fish the entire time it’s in the smokehouse,” he said. “I do think you get much more flavor there.”

Voight said the preparation for a batch of fish is “quite extensive” – starting with an overnight brine soak.

“Then we take the fish out of the brine the morning of the smoking, and it takes about an hour to prepare the fish and get them into the smokehouse,” he said. “From there, it’s about six hours of smoking.”

Voight said Charlie’s has recently added a smoked shrimp option.

“That’s something my grandpa did back in probably the ’60s for a little while,” he said. “We [were] looking for something else to fill in some space and to have a little fun, so we are doing that again.”

Lake Michigan

With whitefish harvested nearly year-round, Voight said Lake Michigan – the only Great Lake fully within U.S. borders and home to more than 130 species of fish – plays a vital role in supplying Charlie’s with its local catch.

“November is the only month when whitefish fishing is closed – that’s when the fish are spawning,” he said. “Whitefish is one of our most popular products. People come to Door County because they eat whitefish in a fish boil or like to eat it smoked.”

Voight said there are also trout and salmon in the lake, but they are designated for sport fishing only.

“Our commercial fishing guys can’t harvest [trout and salmon for our use],” he said. “When we offer trout and salmon in our store, the trout is from Lake Huron, caught by commercial fishermen there. For salmon, it’s a Pacific species, which is wild-caught, or we have an Atlantic species, which is farm-raised in either Chile or Norway.”

How it began

In the early days of Charlie’s, Voight said his grandparents – Roy and Caroline – would set up at the end of the local dock in Gills Rock, selling smoked chubs to summer visitors with nothing more than a cigar box for a cash register.

“My grandpa set up his operation on the original ferry dock where the boats went to Washington Island,” he said. “The ferry used to run out of Gills Rock until probably the early 1980s before moving to Northport. Everybody paid cash back then, so that was his operation.”

Though fishing was a common livelihood for many men and their families at the time, Voight said his grandfather wasn’t able to fully take part because he had contracted polio as a child.

“He lost some ability in his arms, so he couldn’t fish effectively,” he said. “Because he couldn’t fish effectively, he bought a lot of fish from his relatives and local guys, and then he marketed them to outfits in Chicago or New York or wherever he could sell fish.”

Voight said his grandpa was a good businessman.

“I think he realized he could add value to what he was doing by smoking fish and could make a little more money at it,” he said. “Even way back then, tourism was a big thing in Door County. He sold his smoked fish to locals and visitors alike.”

Voight said his father, Charlie, began working alongside his grandfather in the 1950s, and after Roy’s death in 1974, his parents took over the smokehouse.

Voight said it was decided in 1984 to keep the smokehouse open on weekends during the winter and start shipping fish to customers.

“For the first 50 years, we really didn’t have a name for the business,” he said. “Because we started shipping fish, we needed some sort of name, so ‘Charlie’s Smokehouse’ was born. Before that, we were probably known as ‘The Smokehouse on the Dock,’ or some variation of that.”

According to charliessmokehouse.com, in the fall of 1988, the business was moved off the dock to its present location, on the top of the well-known hill in Gills Rock.

“I’ve been helping my dad since I was a kid,” Voight said. “I helped him get the fish on the screens and racks and in the smokehouse when I was a young guy. As a teen, I was smoking fish in the summertime. Then, when I got out of college in 1995, I’ve been working here full time since.”

Ebbs and flows of Door County tourism

Like many business owners in Door County attest, Voight said the colder months in the county are less busy – with Charlie’s slower times falling between November and April.

“We’re open on weekends throughout the winter from Friday through Monday,” he said. “We’re for sure here during those days, but we mainly do our shipping business in the wintertime. In the winter, we probably smoke two or three times a week compared to seven days a week in the summertime.”

Though Charlie’s mainly sells smoked fish, Voight said there are a few other retail items in the store.

“We have a nice deck that overlooks the water where people can picnic,” he said. “People can purchase our smoked fish, crackers, cheese spread, fish spread, etc. – some picnic-style stuff and picnic right here at our shop.”