Puget Sound Fall Fishing 2012

The Puget Sound season ended last week. With that, we are done with another year of fishing! The fishing this fall in the Sound was great. In fact, it was the best local fall season we’ve had in probably the last decade. We delivered a number of fres shipments to the New Seasons Markets in Portland. After the first couple deliveries, we got several comments from the seafood managers that these were some of the finest Keta they had seen. We’d have to agree. Good meat color, firm texture and thick belly walls equals happy fishermen, buyers, and customers!

A fresh Puget Sound Keta salmon fillet seasoned with fennel fronds and bulb,olive oil, salt and pepper. Bake in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes…yum.

Our farmers market customers were just as happy.  We sell the small whole Keta salmon for $20 flat at the market, which is a great deal for a fresh, whole fish!  We also pick out a couple hundred pounds each weekend of large, bright salmon to fillet and bag for the farmers markets.  The Keta salmon has a 3-5 year life cycle, starting out as fry in freshwater, migrating to the ocean to grow and mature, and then running back to Puget Sound as adult salmon.  The 3-year-olds are usually the relatively smaller ones, whereas the 4 and 5-year-olds have a bit of extra time in the ocean to grow and come back larger.  Headed and gutted, a small Keta salmon is 4-5 pounds, whereas a large one is 9-12 pounds.  Keta is the 2nd largest species of Pacific salmon, behind King.

Jonah pitching out some nice fresh Puget Sound Keta salmon into totes, fall 2012.

Of the 5 species of Pacific salmon, the Pink and Keta are by far the most often misunderstood and stigmatized.  When we first started direct-marketing them at the farmers markets about thirteen years ago, most of our customers had never considered eating a salmon that is also known as “chum”.  Now we have a following of customers who realize what an amazing, natural resource this is, in addition to tasting delicious!  We do a couple things to maintain the integrity of the Pink and Keta we bring to market: we catch them in saltwater, bleed, clean and immerse them in  refrigerated seawater immediately after being caught, and rigorously grade the salmon during offload to ensure the right fish end up at the right place.  In the photo above, Jonah is sorting his fish out into 3 totes-#1 hi-grade’s, small #1’s, and smokers.  It was great to see such nice fish in the Sound this year!

Drew filleting fresh Puget Sound Keta in the Loki warehouse, fall 2012.

This fall was the first season since graduating college in 2007 that I didn’t fish with Pete on F/V Njord.  With the expansion of our inventory this summer, I thought it best if I focused on keeping the business operations humming.  Luckily, Drew found us online and worked out great.  He fished every opening with Pete, is working Sundays at the West Seattle Farmers Market, and is planning on deck handing with Pete in Alaska in the summer of 2013!
I’ll update again soon with what we’re up to this winter.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Puget Sound Fishing is Underway!

It was a beautiful, cool night to start the 2011 fall fishing season in Puget Sound.  Unfortunately the fishing was slow for both of our boats, but it looks like it may just be a late season, like most things this year.  We will be fishing 2-3 times per week through mid-November, so please stop by the farmers market to pick up a fresh fillet, whole fish, or fresh ikura!

F/V Loki fishing for Keta in Puget Sound on 10/16/11.

 

Pete Knutson pulling aboard the first Keta salmon of the fall season on F/V Njord

Crazy Summer Madness

Here we are again, past the halfway point of summer fishing, with three more weeks left in the 2010 Alaskan season. I thought I would share a couple stories from last weekend from both land and sea:

Last Saturday at the University District Farmers Market, I, along with Billy of Billy’s Tomatoes, Jay from Alm Hill, Brent from Olsen Farms and my main Loki market man Danny chased and recovered $360 which had been stolen out of the till of one of our fellow vendors, Appel Farms. I was happily enjoying my Patty Pan quesadilla when I saw Brent yelling “hey! HEY! HEY!!!” at a suspicious looking dude, who in turn fled the market at high speed from the southwest corner. I dropped my lunch, turned and gave chase, and found myself running after him down 12th St, through a residential alley, all the while yelling “That guy stole from the market!! Stop him!!”. A random punk rocker jumped off his porch and gave chase with me. The robber, running out of breath after sprinting 5 blocks, looked back and saw us gaining on him, and began to curse. At that point, he threw a large handful of twenty dollar bills on the ground and said “That’s all the money! Leave me alone!”. We gathered up the money and the large contingent of farmers caught up to us. We walked back to the market and returned the money to Appel Farms, who still had not realized she had been robbed. Let that be a lesson to those who might consider stealing from the market: you probably won’t get away with it!

Meanwhile, on Sunday in Southeast Alaska, we almost lost F/V Njord to a boat fire. Pete’s stove, which heats the inside cabin, malfunctioned and caught on fire. Pete and his two deckhands were out on the back deck cleaning fish, and Jonah saw the smoke billowing out from his boat a couple hundred yards away. By the time he got close enough to alert Pete as to what was happening, it was too hot to get inside the boat, and the wiring had been burned out which left Pete with no way to pump water to put the fire out. They ran a long hose over from Jonahs boat, and doused the fire with seawater. All of Pete’s electronics are totaled, and the inside of the boat has extensive damage. Luckily, they caught the fire before it hit any hydraulic or fuel lines, which would have quickly made the situation much worse. Pete also has insurance, which will help out with replacing all of the damaged equipment. Pete missed about half of the fishing opening, but it was still a decent week of fishing between the two boats, all things considered.

With any luck, the rest of the season will be relatively uneventful 🙂