You've arrived at the primary issues between smokers. real wood vrs pellet poopers vrs charcoal/chunk .
When I first bought my WSM in 2002, I was told that charcoal created creosote, especially the Minion Method. And that creosote would flavor my food. Since then that WSM has produced a lot of good flavored smoked meats.
But yes, charcoal/chunk does produce what's considered ' bad smoke ", which is white puffy smoke that contains gases that put an off flavor on meats.
Common advise is to only use charcoal that's ashed over, all white. After that it won't produce any white smoke. But that's really not practical for long cooks. And one would think with the Minion Method that the burn would produce a constant stream of bad smoke, but that's not what happens. There's white smoke at the start of a cook that later becomes clear.
Wood chunks can smolder and produce white puffy smoke. But like charcoal, the smoke eventually turns clear. Getting good clean combustion with wood means wood that is aflame. If we got that on a WSM, our temps would be way too high.
So yes, on a WSM we are getting what is considered " bad smoke " for the early parts of the cook. You can lessen that by cooking at higher temps, like 275 , rather than the true low and slow range of 225 to 235. The lower the temp, the more the chunks smolder.
If ya can't tell, I'm kinda torn on this and there's a lot of conflicting info. There's many successful competition teams who cook with charcoal / chunk. They use gravity feed charcoal pits.
What many consider one of the top barbecue joints here in Oklahoma smokes with charcoal/chunk, Burn Co barbecue in Tulsa. They use about 20 Hasty Bake smokers. Steven Raichlen has visited the joint and did a show on their food.
There's many people who prefer the charcoal/chunk flavor profile.